Related papers: Can GW231123 have a stellar origin?
The discovery of gravitational wave radiation from merging black holes (BHs) also uncovered BHs with masses in the range of ~20-160 Msun. In contrast, the most massive Galactic stellar-mass BH currently known has a mass ~21 Msun. While…
Now that LIGO has revealed the existence of a large number of binary black holes, identifying their origin becomes an important challenge. They might originate in more isolated regions of the galaxy or alternatively they might reside in…
Advanced LIGO and Virgo detected ten binary black holes (BBHs) in their first two observing runs (O1 and O2). Analysis of these events found strong evidence for a dearth of BBHs with component masses greater than $\sim45 \ M_\odot$, as…
We introduce a new technique to search for gravitational wave events from compact binary mergers that produce a clear signal only in a single gravitational wave detector, and marginal signals in other detectors. Such a situation can arise…
The LIGO and Virgo gravitational-wave detectors carried out the first half of their third observing run from April through October 2019. During this period, they detected 39 new signals from the coalescence of black holes or neutron stars,…
GW241011 and GW241110 both exhibit extremely asymmetric masses, high primary spins, and significant spin-orbit misalignment, which challenge the formation of first-generation binary black hole mergers formed from stellar collapse. This…
On the 29th of May 2023, the LIGO-Virgo-KAGRA Collaboration observed a compact binary coalescence event consistent with a neutron star-black hole merger, though the heavier object of mass 2.5-4.5 $M_\odot$ would fall into the purported…
On September 14, 2015 at 09:50:45 UTC the two detectors of the Laser Interferometer Gravitational-Wave Observatory simultaneously observed a transient gravitational-wave signal. The signal sweeps upwards in frequency from 35 to 250 Hz with…
Black holes (BHs) with masses between $\sim 3-5M_{\odot}$, produced by a binary neutron star (BNS) merger, can further pair up with a neutron star or BH and merge again within a Hubble time. However, the astrophysical environments in which…
In May 2023, the LIGO Livingston observatory detected the likely black hole-neutron star (BHNS) merger GW230529_181500. That event is expected to be the merger of a 2.5-4.5 $M_{\odot}$ primary with a secondary compact object of mass between…
LIGO's discovery of a gravitational wave from two merging black holes (BHs) of similar masses rekindled suggestions that primordial BHs (PBHs) make up the dark matter (DM). If so, PBHs would add a Poissonian isocurvature density fluctuation…
A consequence of adopting a modified gravitational theory (MOG) for the aLIGO GW190521 gravitational wave detection involving binary black hole sources is to fit the aLIGO strain and chirp data with lower mass, compact coalescing binary…
The first direct detection of gravitational waves in 2015 marked the beginning of a new era for the study of compact objects. Upcoming detectors, such as the Einstein Telescope, are expected to add thousands of binary coalescences to the…
Gravitational waves from binary black holes have the potential to yield information on both of the intrinsic parameters that characterize the compact objects: their masses and spins. While the component masses are usually resolvable, the…
The recent detection of GW190521 stimulated ideas on how to populate the predicted black hole pair-instability mass gap. One proposed scenario is the dynamical merger of two stars below the pair instability regime forming a star with a…
The recent detection of GW190814 featured the merger of a binary with a primary having a mass of $\sim 23\,M_{\odot}$ and a secondary with a mass of $\sim 2.6\,M_{\odot}$. While the primary was most likely a black hole, the secondary could…
Gravitational wave (GW) measurements provide the most robust constraints of the mass of astrophysical black holes. Using state-of-the-art GW signal models and a unique parameter estimation technique, we infer the source parameters of the…
GW190425 is the second neutron star merger event detected by the Advanced LIGO/Virgo detectors. If interpreted as a double neutron star merger, the total gravitational mass is substantially larger than that of the binary systems identified…
We describe the observation of GW170104, a gravitational-wave signal produced by the coalescence of a pair of stellar-mass black holes. The signal was measured on January 4, 2017 at 10:11:58.6 UTC by the twin advanced detectors of the Laser…
GW230814 was detected by the LIGO Livingston observatory with a signal-to-noise ratio of 42.4 making it the loudest gravitational-wave signal in the GWTC-4.0 catalog. The source is consistent with a binary black hole coalescence similar to…