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The latest GWTC-4 release from the LIGO-Virgo-KAGRA (LVK) collaboration nearly doubles the known population of double compact object mergers and reveals a new trimodal structure in the chirp-mass distribution of merging binary black holes…

The observation of gravitational waves from multiple compact binary coalescences by the LIGO-Virgo-KAGRA detector networks has enabled us to infer the underlying distribution of compact binaries across a wide range of masses, spins, and…

General Relativity and Quantum Cosmology · Physics 2023-11-01 Anarya Ray , Ignacio Magaña Hernandez , Siddharth Mohite , Jolien Creighton , Shasvath Kapadia

The spin of a black hole (BH) encodes information about its formation and evolution history. Yet the understanding of the distribution of BH spins in X-ray binaries (XBs), of the models used to measure spin, and of their impact on…

High Energy Astrophysical Phenomena · Physics 2025-09-04 Paul A. Draghis , Jon M. Miller , Laura Brenneman , Elisa Costantini , Luigi C. Gallo , Mark Reynolds , John A. Tomsick , Abderahmen Zoghbi

We performed Population III (Pop III) binary evolution by using population synthesis simulations for seven different models. We found that Pop III binaries tend to be binary black holes (BBHs) with chirp mass $M_{\rm chirp} \sim…

High Energy Astrophysical Phenomena · Physics 2020-09-30 Tomoya Kinugawa , Takashi Nakamura , Hiroyuki Nakano

A population of binary black hole mergers has now been observed in gravitational waves by Advanced LIGO and Virgo. The masses of these black holes appear to show evidence for a pile-up between $30$--$45$ $M_\odot$ and a cut-off above $\sim…

High Energy Astrophysical Phenomena · Physics 2019-09-25 Simon Stevenson , Matthew Sampson , Jade Powell , Alejandro Vigna-Gómez , Coenraad J. Neijssel , Dorottya Szécsi , Ilya Mandel

We examine the relationship between individual black hole (BH) masses in merging binary black hole (BBH) systems. Analyzing the ten BBH detections from LIGO/Virgo's first two observing runs, we find that the masses of the component BHs…

High Energy Astrophysical Phenomena · Physics 2020-03-18 Maya Fishbach , Daniel E. Holz

The spins of merging binary black holes (BBHs) inferred from gravitational-wave (GW) observations provide key insights into their formation channels. However, spin parameters are typically weakly constrained from data, and their inferred…

General Relativity and Quantum Cosmology · Physics 2026-02-16 Kazuya Kobayashi , Masaki Iwaya , Soichiro Morisaki , Kenta Hotokezaka , Tomoya Kinugawa

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…

Cosmology and Nongalactic Astrophysics · Physics 2021-03-01 Juan Garcia-Bellido , Jose Francisco Nuño Siles , Ester Ruiz Morales

We present the population properties of binary black hole mergers identified by the $\tt{IAS\text{-}HM}$ pipeline (which incorporates higher-order modes in the search templates) during the third observing run (O3) of the LIGO, Virgo, and…

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)…

High Energy Astrophysical Phenomena · Physics 2026-04-01 Jakob Stegmann , Fabio Antonini , Aleksandra Olejak , Sylvia Biscoveanu , Vivien Raymond , Stefano Rinaldi , Elizabeth Flanagan

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…

High Energy Astrophysical Phenomena · Physics 2020-04-08 Zoe Piran , Tsvi Piran

In dense stellar environments, the merger products of binary black hole mergers may undergo additional mergers. These hierarchical mergers are predicted to have higher masses than the first generation of black holes made from stars. The…

High Energy Astrophysical Phenomena · Physics 2020-10-16 Chase Kimball , Colm Talbot , Christopher P. L. Berry , Matthew Carney , Michael Zevin , Eric Thrane , Vicky Kalogera

The more gravitational wave sources are detected, the better the mass distribution of binary black holes (BBHs) becomes known. This stellar graveyard shows several features, including an apparent mass gap which makes the distribution…

High Energy Astrophysical Phenomena · Physics 2023-08-02 Paul Disberg , Gijs Nelemans

We develop a new method based on Gaussian process to reconstruct the mass distribution of binary black holes (BBHs). Instead of prespecifying the formalisms of mass distribution, we introduce a more flexible and nonparametric model with…

High Energy Astrophysical Phenomena · Physics 2021-08-18 Yin-Jie Li , Yuan-Zhu Wang , Ming-Zhe Han , Shao-Peng Tang , Qiang Yuan , Yi-Zhong Fan , Da-Ming Wei

The observed binary black hole (BBH) mergers indicate a large Galactic progenitor population continuously evolving from large orbital separations and low gravitational wave (GW) frequencies to the final merger phase. We investigate the…

High Energy Astrophysical Phenomena · Physics 2019-04-19 Xiao Fang , Todd A. Thompson , Christopher M. Hirata

Vamana is a mixture model framework that infers the astrophysical distribution of chirp mass, mass ratio, and spin component aligned with the orbital angular momentum for the binary black hole population. We extend the mixing components in…

High Energy Astrophysical Phenomena · Physics 2022-04-13 Vaibhav Tiwari

The formation history of binary black hole systems is imprinted on the distribution of their masses, spins, and eccentricity. While much has been learned studying these parameters in turn, recent studies have explored the joint distribution…

High Energy Astrophysical Phenomena · Physics 2022-10-26 Christian Adamcewicz , Eric Thrane

Understanding the growth of supermassive black holes (SMBHs) requires observational constraints on how their angular momentum (or spin) varies with mass, since the relative importance of coherent accretion, chaotic accretion, and mergers…

The existence of massive stellar black hole binaries (MBHBs), with primary black hole (BH) masses $\ge 31 \, M_\odot$, was proven by the detection of the gravitational wave (GW) event GW150914 during the first LIGO/Virgo observing run (O1),…

Astrophysics of Galaxies · Physics 2020-04-14 L. Graziani , R. Schneider , S. Marassi , W. Del Pozzo , M. Mapelli , N. Giacobbo

One striking feature of binary black hole (BBH) mergers observed in the first decade of gravitational-wave astronomy is an excess of events with component masses around $35\,\mathrm{M}_{\odot}$. Multiple formation channels have been…

High Energy Astrophysical Phenomena · Physics 2025-11-17 Soumendra Kishore Roy , Lieke A. C. van Son , Will M. Farr