Related papers: No evidence that the binary black hole mass distri…
Motivated by recent observational results that focus on high redshift black holes, we explore the effect of scatter and observational biases on the ability to recover the intrinsic properties of the black hole population at high redshift.…
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 formation mechanisms of merging binary black holes (BBHs) observed by the LIGO-Virgo-KAGRA collaboration remain uncertain. Detectable eccentricity provides a powerful diagnostic for distinguishing between different formation channels,…
We present the population properties of merging compact binaries inferred using 267 mergers from the cumulative Gravitational-Wave Transient Catalog 5.0. As this data set contains no new sources with a neutron star, we primarily focus on…
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…
Gravitational wave detectors are starting to reveal the redshift evolution of the binary black hole (BBH) merger rate, $R_{\mathrm{BBH}}(z)$. We make predictions for $R_{\mathrm{BBH}}(z)$ as a function of black hole mass for systems…
Stellar theory predicts a forbidden range of black-hole masses between ${\sim}50$--$130\,M_\odot$ due to pair-instability supernovae, but evidence for such a gap in the mass distribution from gravitational-wave astronomy has proved elusive.…
Binary black hole (BBH) systems detected via gravitational-wave (GW) emission are a recently opened astrophysical frontier with many unknowns and uncertainties. Accurate reconstruction of the binary distribution with as few assumptions as…
The redshift evolution of the binary black hole (BBH) merger rate can be expressed as the convolution of the progenitor formation rate with the distribution of time delays between formation and merger. We show that starting with data-driven…
We consider the information that can be derived about massive black-hole binary populations and their formation history solely from current and possible future pulsar timing array (PTA) results. We use models of the stochastic…
We can be biased against observing massive black holes to merge in the local universe as the bounds on the maximum black hole mass ($M_{BH}^{\rm max}$) depends on the assumptions regarding the metallicity evolution of the star forming gas…
In binary black-hole mergers from isolated binary-star evolution, both black holes are from progenitor stars that have lost their hydrogen-rich envelopes by binary mass transfer. Envelope stripping is known to affect the pre-supernova core…
We introduce the first complete non-parametric model for the astrophysical distribution of the binary black hole (BBH) population. Constructed from basis splines, we use these models to conduct the most comprehensive data-driven…
Gravitational wave detectors are observing an increasing number of binary black hole (BBH) mergers, revealing a bimodal mass distribution of BBHs, which hints at diverse formation histories for these systems. Using the rapid binary…
We use the gravitational wave signals from binary black hole merger events observed by LIGO and Virgo to reconstruct the underlying mass and spin distributions of the population of merging black holes. We reconstruct the population using…
The recent O4a release from the LIGO-Virgo-KAGRA collaboration, which significantly increased the number of gravitational-wave (GW) detections, reveals features with potentially important astrophysical implications. One notable example is a…
The detection of gravitational-wave events revealed that there are numerous populations of black hole (BH) binaries that can merge within the age of the Universe. Although several formation channels of such binaries are known, considerable…
One of the goals of gravitational-wave astronomy is to quantify the evolution of the compact binary merger rate with redshift. The redshift distribution of black hole mergers would offer considerable information about their evolutionary…
The vast majority of massive binary systems in the universe is evidently unsuited to produce merging binary black holes. However, several narrow evolutionary paths of isolated massive binaries towards this goal have recently been…
We report on the population of the 47 compact binary mergers detected with a false-alarm rate 1/yr in the second LIGO--Virgo Gravitational-Wave Transient Catalog, GWTC-2. We observe several characteristics of the merging binary black hole…