Related papers: The Long Road to Alignment: Measuring Black Hole S…
The degree of black-hole spin-orbit misalignment ("tilts") in the astrophysical population could be a powerful diagnostic to distinguish between binary formation in isolation, in dynamical environments, or in hierarchical triples. However,…
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…
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)…
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 continued operation of the Advanced LIGO and Advanced Virgo gravitational-wave detectors is enabling the first detailed measurements of the mass, spin, and redshift distributions of the merging binary black hole population. Our present…
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,…
Binary black holes formed via different pathways are predicted to have distinct spin properties. Measuring these properties with gravitational waves provides an opportunity to unveil the origins of binary black holes. Recent work draws…
While much has been learned about black holes by analyzing the latest LVK catalog, GWTC-3, a measurement of the astrophysical distribution of the black hole spin orientations remains elusive. This is usually probed by measuring the cosine…
It remains an open question whether the binary black hole mergers observed with gravitational-wave detectors originate from the evolution of isolated massive binary stars or were dynamically driven by perturbations from the environment.…
Compact binary coalescences are the most promising sources of gravitational waves (GWs) for ground based detectors. Binary systems containing one or two spinning black holes are particularly interesting due to spin-orbit (and eventual…
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…
The first direct detections of gravitational waves from merging binary black holes open a unique window into the binary black hole formation environment. One promising environmental signature is the angular distribution of the black hole…
We study the expected spin misalignments of merging binary black holes (BHs) formed in isolation by combining state-of-the-art population-synthesis models with efficient post-Newtonian evolutions, thus tracking sources from stellar…
Binary black hole spins are among the key observables for gravitational wave astronomy. Among the spin parameters, their orientations within the orbital plane, $\phi_1$, $\phi_2$ and $\Delta \phi=\phi_1-\phi_2$, are critical for…
We investigate how to use information on the effective spin parameter of binary black hole mergers from the LIGO-Virgo gravitational wave detections to discriminate the origin of the merging black holes. We calculate the expected…
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…
The identification of the first confirmed neutron star - black hole (NS-BH) binary mergers by the LIGO, Virgo and KAGRA collaboration provides the opportunity to investigate the properties of the early sample of confirmed and candidate…
With the detection of four candidate binary black hole (BBH) mergers by the Advanced LIGO detectors thus far, it is becoming possible to constrain the properties of the BBH merger population in order to better understand the formation of…
Measurements of the binary black hole spin distribution from the growing catalog of gravitational-wave observations can help elucidate the astrophysical processes shaping the formation and evolution of these systems. Spin-orbit resonances…
Despite a decade's worth of gravitational wave observation, the origin of the binary black hole (BBH) mergers detected by the LIGO-VIRGO-Kagra (LVK) collaboration remains an open question. Towards assessing the feasibility and prevalence of…