Related papers: The binary black hole explorer: on-the-fly visuali…
Hierarchical structure formation inevitably leads to the formation of supermassive binary black holes (BBHs) with a sub-parsec separation in galactic nuclei. However, to date there has been no unambiguous detection of such systems. In an…
A novel approach to binary black hole gravitational wave analysis improves the process of inferring black hole properties by selecting the most accurate waveform model for each region of the parameter space, resulting in tighter constraints…
Almost a hundred compact binary mergers have been detected via gravitational waves by the LIGO-Virgo-KAGRA collaboration in the past few years providing us with a significant amount of new information on black holes and neutron stars. In…
The merger rate of black hole binaries inferred from the detections in the first Advanced LIGO science run, implies that a stochastic background produced by a cosmological population of mergers will likely mask the primordial…
The growing number of binary black hole mergers detected through gravitational waves offers unprecedented insight into their underlying population, yet their astrophysical formation channels remain unresolved. We present a new method to…
Previous analytic and numerical calculations suggest that, at each instant, the emission from a precessing black hole binary closely resembles the emission from a nonprecessing analog. In this paper we quantitatively explore the validity…
In a recent paper arXiv:0709.0299, we introduced a spin expansion that provides a simple yet powerful way to understand aspects of binary black hole (BBH) merger. This approach relies on the symmetry properties of initial and final…
Gravitational-wave observations provide the unique opportunity of studying black hole formation channels and histories -- but only if we can identify their origin. One such formation mechanism is the dynamical synthesis of black hole…
Despite a decade's worth of gravitational wave observation, the origin of the binary black hole (BBH) mergers detected by the LIGO-VIRGO-Kagra (LVK) collaboration remains an open question. Towards assessing the feasibility and prevalence of…
Current searches for gravitational waves (GWs) from black hole binaries using the LIGO and Virgo observatories are limited to analytical models for systems with black hole spins aligned (or anti-aligned) with the orbital angular momentum of…
Binary black holes are the most abundant source of gravitational-wave observations. Gravitational-wave observatories in the next decade will require tremendous increases in the accuracy of numerical waveforms modeling binary black holes,…
Recently Venumadhav et al. (2019) proposed a new pipeline to analyze LIGO-Virgo's O1-O2 data and discovered eight new binary black hole (BBH) mergers, including a high effective spin, chi_{eff}, one. This discovery sheds new light on the…
The inspiral and merger of two orbiting black holes is among the most promising sources for the first (hopefully imminent) direct detection of gravitational waves (GWs), and measurements of these signals could provide a wealth of…
We conduct a thorough Bayesian analysis of the possibility that the black hole merger events seen in gravitational waves are primordial black hole (PBH) mergers. Using the latest merger rate models for PBH binaries drawn from a lognormal…
Understanding the predictions of general relativity for the dynamical interactions of two black holes has been a long-standing unsolved problem in theoretical physics. Black-hole mergers are monumental astrophysical events, releasing…
This paper presents a parameter estimation analysis of the seven binary black hole mergers---GW170104, GW170608, GW170729, GW170809, GW170814, GW170818, and GW170823---detected during the second observing run of the Advanced LIGO and Virgo…
Activities in data analysis and numerical simulation of gravitational waves have to date largely proceeded independently. In this work we study how waveforms obtained from numerical simulations could be effectively used within the data…
The interaction of binary black hole mergers with their environments can be studied using numerical relativity simulations. These start only a short finite time before merger, at which point appropriate initial conditions must be imposed. A…
The predicted rate of binary black hole mergers from galactic fields can vary over several orders of magnitude and is extremely sensitive to the assumptions of stellar evolution. But in dense stellar environments such as globular clusters,…
In response to LIGO's observation of GW170104, we performed a series of full numerical simulations of binary black holes, each designed to replicate likely realizations of its dynamics and radiation. These simulations have been performed at…