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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…

General Relativity and Quantum Cosmology · Physics 2025-02-14 Charlie Hoy , Stephen Fairhurst , Ilya Mandel

The growing number of binary black hole mergers detected through gravitational waves offers unprecedented insight into their underlying population, yet their astrophysical formation channels remain unresolved. We present a new method to…

General Relativity and Quantum Cosmology · Physics 2025-10-23 William J. Smith , Krystal Ruiz-Rocha , Kelly Holley-Bockelmann , Michela Mapelli , Karan Jani

Gravitational-wave observations of massive, rapidly spinning binary black holes mergers provide increasing evidence for the dynamical origin of some mergers. Previous studies have interpreted the mergers with primary mass…

High Energy Astrophysical Phenomena · Physics 2025-11-10 Hui Tong , Thomas A. Callister , Maya Fishbach , Eric Thrane , Fabio Antonini , Simon Stevenson , Isobel M. Romero-Shaw , Fani Dosopoulou

Binary neutron-star mergers will predominantly produce black-hole remnants of mass $\sim 3-4\,M_{\odot}$, thus populating the putative \emph{low mass gap} between neutron stars and stellar-mass black holes. If these low-mass black holes are…

General Relativity and Quantum Cosmology · Physics 2026-01-05 Anuradha Gupta , Davide Gerosa , K. G. Arun , Emanuele Berti , Will Farr , B. S. Sathyaprakash

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…

High Energy Astrophysical Phenomena · Physics 2017-08-29 Colm Talbot , Eric Thrane

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

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…

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…

High Energy Astrophysical Phenomena · Physics 2022-10-20 Matthew Mould , Davide Gerosa , Floor S. Broekgaarden , Nathan Steinle

Analyses of the growing catalog of binary black hole (BBH) mergers observed by the LIGO-Virgo-KAGRA detectors are beginning to resolve features in their population-level mass, spin, and redshift distributions, revealing imprints of the…

High Energy Astrophysical Phenomena · Physics 2026-05-26 April Qiu Cheng , Alexandre Toubiana , Sylvia Biscoveanu , Jonathan Gair

While the Advanced LIGO and Virgo gravitational-wave experiments now regularly observe binary black hole mergers, the evolutionary origin of these events remains a mystery. Analysis of the binary black hole spin distribution may shed light…

High Energy Astrophysical Phenomena · Physics 2020-06-10 Simona Miller , Thomas A. Callister , Will Farr

The Advanced LIGO and Virgo detectors have now observed approximately 50 black-hole-binary mergers, from which we can begin to infer how rapidly astrophysical black holes spin. The LIGO-Virgo Collaboration (LVC) analysis of detections up to…

General Relativity and Quantum Cosmology · Physics 2022-04-26 Charlie Hoy , Stephen Fairhurst , Mark Hannam , Vaibhav Tiwari

During its first 4 months of taking data, Advanced LIGO has detected gravitational waves from two binary black hole mergers, GW150914 and GW151226, along with the statistically less significant binary black hole merger candidate LVT151012.…

High Energy Astrophysical Phenomena · Physics 2017-04-12 Simon Stevenson , Alejandro Vigna-Gómez , Ilya Mandel , Jim W. Barrett , Coenraad J. Neijssel , David Perkins , Selma E. de Mink

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

Despite the observation of nearly 100 compact binary coalescence (CBC) events up to the end of the Advanced gravitational-wave (GW) detectors' third observing run (O3), there remain fundamental open questions regarding their astrophysical…

General Relativity and Quantum Cosmology · Physics 2025-01-22 Ana Lorenzo-Medina , Thomas Dent

Recently, the LIGO-Virgo collaborations have reported the coalescence of a binary involving a black hole and a low-mass gap object (LMGO) with mass in the range $\sim2.5-5M_\odot$. Such detections, challenge our understanding of the black…

Astrophysics of Galaxies · Physics 2021-08-11 Konstantinos Kritos , Ilias Cholis

The relation between the mass and spin of stellar-mass binary black holes (BBHs) has been proposed to be a smoking gun for the presence of multiple formation channels for compact objects. First-generation black holes (BHs) formed by…

General Relativity and Quantum Cosmology · Physics 2024-12-04 Grégoire Pierra , Simone Mastrogiovanni , Stéphane Perriès

With several dozen binary black hole events detected by LIGO/Virgo to date and many more expected in the next few years, gravitational-wave astronomy is shifting from individual-event analyses to population studies. Using the GWTC-2…

General Relativity and Quantum Cosmology · Physics 2022-05-11 Gabriele Franciolini , Vishal Baibhav , Valerio De Luca , Ken K. Y. Ng , Kaze W. K. Wong , Emanuele Berti , Paolo Pani , Antonio Riotto , Salvatore Vitale

We perform a statistical inference of the astrophysical population of binary black hole (BBH) mergers observed during the first two observing runs of Advanced LIGO and Advanced Virgo, including events reported in the GWTC-1 and IAS…

High Energy Astrophysical Phenomena · Physics 2020-12-22 Javier Roulet , Tejaswi Venumadhav , Barak Zackay , Liang Dai , Matias Zaldarriaga

Gravitational wave measurements will provide insight into the population of coalescing compact binaries throughout the universe. We describe and demonstrate a flexible parametric method to infer the event rate as a function of compact…

General Relativity and Quantum Cosmology · Physics 2019-08-20 Daniel Wysocki , Jacob Lange , Richard O'Shaughnessy

The merger of two massive 30 Msun black holes has been detected in gravitational waves (1,GW150914). This discovery validates recent predictions (2-4) that massive binary black holes would constitute the first detection. However, previous…

High Energy Astrophysical Phenomena · Physics 2016-07-13 Krzysztof Belczynski , Daniel E. Holz , Tomasz Bulik , Richard O'Shaughnessy