Related papers: The orientations of the binary black holes in GWTC…
The first direct detections of gravitational waves from merging binary black holes open a unique window into the binary black hole formation environment. One promising environmental signature is the angular distribution of the black hole…
The standard model of cosmology is underpinned by the assumption of the statistical isotropy of the Universe. Observations of the cosmic microwave background, galaxy distributions, and supernovae, among other media, support the assumption…
We demonstrate how to constrain the degree of absolute alignment of the total angular momenta of LIGO-Virgo binary black holes, looking for a special direction in space that would break isotropy. We also allow for inhomogeneities in the…
Measuring the distribution of spin tilts-the angles between the spin vectors and the binary orbital angular momentum-in stellar-mass binary black holes detected by LIGO-Virgo-KAGRA would provide valuable insight into their astrophysical…
Gravitational wave detection from binary black hole (BBH) inspirals has become routine thanks to the LIGO/Virgo interferometers. The nature of these back holes remains uncertain. We study here the spin distributions of LIGO/Virgo black…
While much has been learned about black holes by analyzing the latest LVK catalog, GWTC-3, a measurement of the astrophysical distribution of the black hole spin orientations remains elusive. This is usually probed by measuring the cosine…
Recent work paints a conflicting portrait of the distribution of black hole spins in merging binaries measured with gravitational waves. Some analyses find that a significant fraction of merging binaries contain at least one black hole with…
The spin-orbit tilt angles $\theta_{1(2)}$ of merging stellar-mass black holes provide key insights into their astrophysical origin. Non-parametric population modelling of The LIGO, Virgo, and KAGRA Collaborations (2025a, arXiv:2508.18083)…
We constrain the distribution of merging compact binaries across the celestial sphere using the GWTC-3 catalog from the LIGO-Virgo-KAGRA Collaborations' (LVK) third observing run. With 63 confident detections from O3, we constrain the…
The Advanced LIGO and Advanced Virgo gravitational wave detectors have detected a population of binary black hole mergers in their first two observing runs. For each of these events we have been able to associate a potential sky location…
Peculiar velocity encodes rich information about the formation, dynamics, evolution, and merging history of binary black holes. In this work, we employ a hierarchical Bayesian model to infer the peculiar velocity distribution of binary…
An effective field theory framework, the Standard-Model Extension, is used to investigate the existence of Lorentz and CPT-violating effects during gravitational wave propagation. We implement a modified equation for the dispersion of…
The distribution of effective spin $\chi_{\rm eff}$, a parameter that encodes the degree of spin-orbit alignment in a binary system, has been widely regarded as a robust discriminator between the isolated and dynamical formation pathways…
The relative spin orientations of black holes (BHs) in binaries encode their evolutionary history: BHs assembled dynamically should have isotropically distributed spins, while spins of the BHs originating in the field should be aligned with…
Version 4.0 of the Gravitational-Wave Transient Catalog (GWTC-4.0) adds new candidates detected by the LIGO, Virgo, and KAGRA observatories through the first part of the fourth observing run (O4a: 2023 May 24 15:00:00 to 2024 January 16…
In modified gravity models that allow for additional non-compact spacetime dimensions, energy from gravitational waves can leak into these extra spacetime dimensions, leading to a reduction in the amplitude of the observed gravitational…
The observation of gravitational-wave signals from merging black-hole binaries enables direct measurement of the properties of the black holes. An individual observation allows measurement of the black-hole masses, but only limited…
Binary black holes (BBHs) in eccentric orbits produce distinct modulations in gravitational waves (GWs); measuring orbital eccentricity provides evidence for dynamical binary formation channels. We analyze 57 GW events from the…
The fourth gravitational wave transient catalog~(GWTC-4) has enabled empirical probes of the theorized pair-instability gap in the higher end of the binary black hole~(BBH) mass-spectrum. In this letter, using flexibly parametrized models,…
Attempts to understand the formation of binary black hole (BBH) systems detected via gravitational wave (GW) emission are affected by many unknowns and uncertainties, from both the observational and theoretical (astrophysical modelling)…