Related papers: A new spin on LIGO-Virgo binary black holes
The latest binary black hole population estimates argue for a subpopulation of unequal component mass binaries with spins that are likely small but isotropically distributed. This implies a non-zero probability of detecting spin-induced…
Measurements of the spin of stellar mass black holes (BHs) are now possible both through LIGO observations of binary BH mergers and for BHs in X-ray binary systems. The spins of BHs as inferred from LIGO observations suggest that BH spins…
Templates modeling just the dominant mode of gravitational radiation are generally sufficient for the unbiased parameter inference of near-equal-mass compact binary mergers. However, neglecting the subdominant modes can bias the inference…
Gravitational-wave (GW) measurements of physical effects such as spin-induced quadrupole moments can distinguish binaries consisting of black holes from non-black hole binaries. While these effects may be poorly constrained for single-event…
In the last five years, gravitational-wave astronomy has gone from a purely theoretical field into a thriving experimental science. Many gravitational-wave signals, emitted by stellar-mass binary black holes and binary neutron stars, have…
In this thesis we consider the data analysis problem of detecting gravitational waves emitted by inspiraling binary systems. Detection of gravitational waves will open a new window on the Universe enabling direct detection of systems such…
Gravitational waves radiated by the coalescence of compact-object binaries containing a neutron star and a black hole are one of the most interesting sources for the ground-based gravitational-wave observatories Advanced LIGO and Advanced…
The events detected by the LIGO Virgo KAGRA collaboration over a period of 10 years have yielded a treasure trove of signals from compact binary coalescences. None of these events have shown a confident signature of eccentricity. With…
While the majority of gravitational wave (GW) events observed by the LIGO and Virgo detectors are consistent with mergers of binary black holes (BBHs) on quasi-circular orbits, some events are also consistent with non-zero orbital…
It remains an open question whether the binary black hole mergers observed with gravitational-wave detectors originate from the evolution of isolated massive binary stars or were dynamically driven by perturbations from the environment.…
The heaviest black holes discovered through gravitational waves have masses that are difficult to explain with current standard stellar models. This discrepancy may be due to a series of hierarchical mergers, where the observed black holes…
Orbital eccentricity is a crucial physical effect to unveil the origin of compact-object binaries detected by ground- and spaced-based gravitational-wave (GW) observatories. Here, we perform for the first time a Bayesian inference study of…
We study the formation of coalescing binary black holes via the evolution of isolated field binaries that go through the common envelope phase in order to obtain the combined distributions of the main observables of Advanced LIGO. We used a…
We compare the current LIGO/Virgo upper limits on double compact object volumetric merger rates with our theoretical predictions. Our optimistic models are a factor of 3 below the existing upper limits for massive BH-BH systems with total…
When formed through dynamical interactions, stellar-mass binary black holes may retain eccentric orbits ($e>0.1$ at 10 Hz) detectable by ground-based gravitational-wave detectors. Eccentricity can therefore be used to differentiate…
Population inference of gravitational-wave catalogues is a useful tool to translate observations of black-hole mergers into constraints on compact-binary formation. Different formation channels predict identifiable signatures in the…
The ever-increasing number of detections of gravitational waves (GWs) from compact binaries by the Advanced LIGO and Advanced Virgo detectors allows us to perform ever-more sensitive tests of general relativity (GR) in the dynamical and…
Under the framework of gravitational effective field theory, we propose a theory agnostic strategy of searching for higher-spin particles with gravitational waves from compact binary inspirals. Using this strategy, we analyze gravitational…
We have searched for gravitational waves from coalescing low mass compact binary systems with a total mass between 2 and 35 Msun and a minimum component mass of 1 Msun using data from the first year of the fifth science run (S5) of the…
Robustly measuring binary black hole spins via gravitational waves is key to understanding these systems' astrophysical origins, but remains challenging -- especially for high-mass systems, whose signals are short and dominated by the…