Related papers: Four eccentric mergers increase the evidence that …
The gravitational-wave (GW) detections reported by the LIGO-Virgo-KAGRA (LVK) collaboration have so far been consistent with quasi-circular compact binary coalescences (CBCs). Nevertheless, a small fraction of binaries driven to merge…
Dense astrophysical environments like globular clusters and galactic nuclei can host hyperbolic encounters of black holes which can lead to gravitational-wave driven capture. There are several astrophysical models which predict a fraction…
We estimate binary compact object merger detection rates for LIGO, including the binaries formed in ellipticals long ago. Specifically, we convolve hundreds of model realizations of elliptical- and spiral-galaxy population syntheses with a…
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…
Initial orbital eccentricities of gravitational wave (GW) events associated with merging binary black holes (BBHs) should provide clues to their formation scenarios, mainly because various BBH formation channels predict distinct…
We are living through the dawn of the era of gravitational wave astronomy. Our first glances through this new window upon the sky has revealed a new population of objects. Since it first began observing in late 2015, the advanced Laser…
The spin orientations of spinning binary black hole (BBH) mergers detected by ground-based gravitational wave detectors such as LIGO and Virgo can provide important clues about the formation of such binaries. However, these spin tilts,…
The discovery of the gravitational-wave source GW150914 with the Advanced LIGO detectors provides the first observational evidence for the existence of binary black-hole systems that inspiral and merge within the age of the Universe. Such…
Two binary neutron star mergers, GW170817 and GW190425, have been detected by Advanced LIGO and Virgo. These signals were detected by matched-filter searches that assume the star's orbit has circularized by the time their gravitational-wave…
One of the proposed channels of binary black hole mergers involves dynamical interactions of three black holes. In such scenarios, it is possible that all three black holes merge in a so-called hierarchical merger chain, where two of the…
We argue that all dynamical astrophysical black hole merger channels are expected to result in a common eccentricity distribution at gravitational wave (GW) frequencies relevant for LIGO/Virgo/KAGRA (LVK) in the high eccentricity limit.…
With about a hundred mergers of binary black holes (BBHs) detected via gravitational waves by the LIGO-Virgo-KAGRA (LVK) Collaboration, our understanding of the darkest objects in the Universe has taken unparalleled steps forward. While…
The recent detections of the binary black hole mergers GW150914 and GW151226 have inaugurated the field of gravitational-wave astronomy. For the two main formation channels that have been proposed for these sources, isolated binary…
GW170817 showed that neutron star mergers not only emit gravitational waves but also can release electromagnetic signatures in multiple wavelengths. Within the first half of the third observing run of the Advanced LIGO and Virgo detectors,…
The population of binary black hole (BBH) mergers observed by the LIGO-Virgo-KAGRA (LVK) collaboration offers a window into the cosmic evolution of compact binaries and their formation. We employ the semi-analytic population-synthesis code…
In this work, we use the coherent WaveBurst (cWB) pipeline enhanced with machine learning (ML) to search for binary black hole (BBH) mergers in the Advanced LIGO-Virgo strain data from the third observing run (O3). We detect, with…
Searches for gravitational waves from compact-binary mergers, which to date have reported $\sim100$ observations, have previously ignored binaries whose components are both consistent with the mass of neutron stars $(1 M_\odot$ to $ 2…
The recent discovery of GW150914, the binary black hole merger detected by Advanced LIGO, has the potential to revolutionize observational astrophysics. But to fully utilize this new window into the universe, we must compare these new…
The eccentricity of binary black-hole mergers is predicted to be an indicator of the history of their formation. In particular, eccentricity is a strong signature of dynamical formation rather than formation by stellar evolution in isolated…
Maximizing the number of detections in matched filter searches for compact binary coalescence (CBC) gravitational wave (GW) signals requires a model of the source population distribution. In previous searches using the PyCBC framework,…