Related papers: Reconstructing parametric gravitational-wave popul…
We quantify the impact of finite catalog size, or "catalog variance," on current gravitational-wave population analyses. The distribution of merging binary black holes is commonly reconstructed via hierarchical Bayesian inference, with…
Recent LIGO-Virgo-KAGRA (LVK) analyses have revealed complex structure in the binary black hole (BBH) population, including distinct features in the primary mass spectrum and nontrivial spin-mass correlations. However, the phenomenological…
We present a non-parametric technique to infer the projected-mass distribution of a gravitational lens system with multiple strong-lensed images. The technique involves a dynamic grid in the lens plane on which the mass distribution of the…
We derive a Fisher matrix for the parameters characterising a population of gravitational-wave events. This provides a guide to the precision with which population parameters can be estimated with multiple observations, which becomes…
We introduce the use of autoregressive normalizing flows for rapid likelihood-free inference of binary black hole system parameters from gravitational-wave data with deep neural networks. A normalizing flow is an invertible mapping on a…
The detection of gravitational waves by the LIGO-Virgo-KAGRA collaboration has ushered in a new era of observational astronomy, emphasizing the need for rapid and detailed parameter estimation and population-level analyses. Traditional…
In the last few years, machine learning techniques, in particular convolutional neural networks, have been investigated as a method to replace or complement traditional matched filtering techniques that are used to detect the…
This thesis explores parameter estimation methods for rapidly reconstructing compact binary sources generating gravitational waves. It employs numerical linear algebra and meshfree approximation techniques to expedite waveform generation…
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…
The population of the observed gravitational wave events encodes unique information on the formation and evolution of stellar-mass black holes, from the underlying astrophysical processes to the large-scale dynamics of the Universe. We use…
The origins of merging compact binaries observed by the LIGO-Virgo-KAGRA gravitational-wave detectors remain uncertain, with multiple astrophysical channels possibly contributing to the merger rate. Formation processes can imprint…
Bayesian inference is a powerful tool in gravitational-wave astronomy. It enables us to deduce the properties of merging compact-object binaries and to determine how these mergers are distributed as a population according to mass, spin, and…
Gravitational waves (GWs) from merging compact objects encode direct information about the luminosity distance to the binary. When paired with a redshift measurement, this enables standard-siren cosmology: a Hubble diagram can be…
The LIGO-Virgo-KAGRA collaboration has announced the detection of almost 100 binary black holes so far, which have been used in several studies to infer the features of the underlying binary black hole population. From these, it is possible…
The distribution of binary black hole (BBH) masses and its evolution with redshift provide key insights into the different formation channels of compact objects and their dependence on cosmic time and stellar properties such as metallicity…
Gravitational-wave (GW) measurements of physical effects such as spin-induced quadrupole moments can distinguish binaries consisting of black holes from non-black hole binaries. While these effects may be poorly constrained for single-event…
Soon, the combination of electromagnetic and gravitational signals will open the door to a new era of gravitational-wave (GW) cosmology. It will allow us to test the propagation of tensor perturbations across cosmic time and study the…
Accurate modeling of selection effects is a key ingredient to the success of gravitational-wave astronomy. The detection probability plays a crucial role in both statistical population studies, where it enters the hierarchical Bayesian…
Inferring the properties of colliding black holes from gravitational-wave observations is subject to systematic errors arising from modelling uncertainties. Although the accuracy of each model can be calculated through comparison to…
Since the first detection of gravitational waves in 2015, gravitational-wave astronomy has emerged as a rapidly advancing field that holds great potential for studying the cosmos, from probing the properties of black holes to testing the…