Parameter estimation of binary black holes in the endpoint of the up-down instability
Abstract
Black-hole binary spin precession admits equilibrium solutions corresponding to systems with (anti-) aligned spins. Among these, binaries in the up-down configuration, where the spin of the heavier (lighter) black hole is co- (counter-) aligned with the orbital angular momentum, might be unstable to small perturbations of the spin directions. The occurrence of the up-down instability leads to gravitational-wave sources that formed with aligned spins but are detected with precessing spins. We present a Bayesian procedure based on the Savage-Dickey density ratio to test the up-down origin of gravitational-wave events. This is applied to both simulated signals, which indicate that achieving strong evidence is within the reach of current experiments, and the LIGO/Virgo events released to date, which indicate that current data are not informative enough.
Keywords
Cite
@article{arxiv.2304.13063,
title = {Parameter estimation of binary black holes in the endpoint of the up-down instability},
author = {Viola De Renzis and Davide Gerosa and Matthew Mould and Riccardo Buscicchio and Lorenzo Zanga},
journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:2304.13063},
year = {2023}
}