Related papers: Gravitational-wave population inference at past ti…
The astrophysical origins of the binary black hole systems seen with gravitational waves are still not well understood. However, features in the distribution of black-hole masses, spins, redshifts, and eccentricities provide clues into how…
Gravitational waves (GW), emanating from binary black holes (BBH), encode vital information about their source. GW signals enable us to deduce key properties of the BBH population across the universe, including mass, spin, and eccentricity…
Hierarchical Bayesian inference is an essential tool for studying the population properties of compact binaries with gravitational waves. The basic premise is to infer the unknown prior distribution of binary black hole and/or neutron star…
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…
Gravitational waves detected by advanced ground-based detectors have allowed studying the universe in a way which is fully complementary to electromagnetic observations. As more sources are detected, it will be possible to measure…
One fundamental goal of the newly born gravitational wave astronomy is discovering the origin of the observed binary black hole mergers. Towards this end, identifying features in the growing wealth of data may help in distinguishing…
The population of black holes observed via gravitational waves currently covers the local universe up to a redshift $z\lesssim 1$, for the most massive merging binaries, or $z\lesssim 0.25$ for low-mass BH binaries (BBH). Evolution of the…
We present a full sampling of the hierarchical population posterior distribution of merging black holes using current gravitational-wave data. We directly tackle the most relevant intrinsic parameter space made of the binary parameters…
Strong lensing of gravitational waves can produce several detectable images as repeated events in the upcoming observing runs, which can be detected with the posterior overlap analysis (Bayes factor). The choice of the binary black hole…
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…
Many astronomical surveys are limited by the brightness of the sources, and gravitational-wave searches are no exception. The detectability of gravitational waves from merging binaries is affected by the mass and spin of the constituent…
Ten binary black-hole mergers have already been detected during the first two observing runs of advanced LIGO and Virgo, and many more are expected to be observed in the near future. This opens the possibility for gravitational-wave…
There are at least two formation scenarios consistent with the first gravitational-wave observations of binary black hole mergers. In field models, black hole binaries are formed from stellar binaries that may undergo common envelope…
Observations of gravitational waves from massive binary black hole systems at cosmological distances can be used to search for a dependence of the speed of propagation of the waves on wavelength, and thereby to bound the mass of a…
Recently, the possibility of detecting gravitational wave echoes in the data stream subsequent to the binary black hole mergers observed by LIGO was suggested. Motivated by this suggestion, we presented templates of echoes based on black…
The origin of the spins of stellar-mass black holes is still controversial, and angular momentum transport inside massive stars is one of the main sources of uncertainty. Here, we apply hierarchical Bayesian inference to derive constraints…
We use population inference to explore the impact that uncertainties in the distribution of binary black holes (BBH) have on the astrophysical gravitational-wave background (AGWB). Our results show that the AGWB monopole is sensitive to the…
Shortly after a new class of objects is discovered, the attention shifts from the properties of the individual sources to the question of their origin: do all sources come from the same underlying population, or several populations are…
Spectral-sirens inference enables the extraction of cosmological parameters from gravitational-wave data alone, without electromagnetic counterparts or galaxy catalogs. We introduce new parametric mass functions for the binary black hole…
The large number of gravitational wave (GW) detections have revealed the properties of the merging black hole binary population, but how such systems are formed is still heavily debated. Understanding the imprint of stellar physics on the…