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The origins of the stellar-mass black hole mergers discovered by LIGO/Virgo are still unknown. Here we show that, if migration traps develop in the \add{accretion} disks of Active Galactic Nuclei (AGNs) and promote the mergers of their…

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…

High Energy Astrophysical Phenomena · Physics 2021-05-27 Vaibhav Tiwari , Stephen Fairhurst

Since the first signal in 2015, the gravitational-wave detections of merging binary black holes (BBHs) by the LIGO and Virgo collaborations (LVC) have completely transformed our understanding of the lives and deaths of compact object…

We explore the masses, merger rates, eccentricities, and spins for field binary black holes driven to merger by a third companion through the Lidov-Kozai mechanism. Using a population synthesis approach, we model the creation of…

High Energy Astrophysical Phenomena · Physics 2018-08-07 Carl L. Rodriguez , Fabio Antonini

The origin of the Binary Black Hole (BBH) mergers detected through Gravitational Waves (GWs) by the LIGO-Virgo-KAGRA (LVK) collaboration remains debated. One fundamental reason is our ignorance of their host environment, as the typical size…

High Energy Astrophysical Phenomena · Physics 2022-05-24 Niccolò Veronesi , Elena Maria Rossi , Sjoert van Velzen , Riccardo Buscicchio

The LIGO-Virgo-KAGRA (LVK) Collaboration has reported nearly 100 BH-BH mergers. The LVK provides estimates of rates, masses, effective spins, and redshifts for these mergers. Yet, the formation channel(s) of the mergers remains uncertain.…

High Energy Astrophysical Phenomena · Physics 2022-08-31 K. Belczynski , Z. Doctor , M. Zevin , A. Olejak , S. Banerjee , D. Chattopadhyay

The ongoing observations from ground based gravitational-wave observatories have led to the detection of more than a hundred merger events between black holes. We use the LIGO-Virgo-KAGRA (LVK) observations from 2015 to early 2024, to test…

Cosmology and Nongalactic Astrophysics · Physics 2026-03-11 Mehdi El Bouhaddouti , Ilias Cholis , Muhsin Aljaf

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…

High Energy Astrophysical Phenomena · Physics 2024-04-24 Thomas A. Callister , Will M. Farr

Most of the binary black hole (BBH) mergers detected by LIGO and Virgo could be explained by first-generation mergers formed from the collapse of stars, while others might come from second (or higher) generation mergers, namely hierarchical…

High Energy Astrophysical Phenomena · Physics 2022-11-01 Guo-Peng Li

The origin of the black-hole:black-hole mergers discovered through gravitational waves with for example the LIGO/Virgo collaboration are a mystery. We investigate the idea that some of these black holes originate from the centers of…

Astrophysics of Galaxies · Physics 2019-07-12 Christopher J. Conselice , Rachana Bhatawdekar , Antonella Palmese , William G. Hartley

We have calculated the detectable merger rate of primordial black holes, as a function of the redshift, as well as the binary's mass ratio, total mass and chirp mass (observables that have not previously been explored in great detail for…

Cosmology and Nongalactic Astrophysics · Physics 2020-01-22 Andrew D. Gow , Christian T. Byrnes , Alex Hall , John A. Peacock

The origin of the black hole (BH) binary mergers observed by LIGO-Virgo is still uncertain, as are the boundaries of the stellar BH mass function. Stellar evolution models predict a dearth of BHs both at masses $\gtrsim 50$ M$_\odot$ and…

Astrophysics of Galaxies · Physics 2020-05-27 Giacomo Fragione , Abraham Loeb , Frederic A. Rasio

Ninety gravitational wave events have been detected by the LIGO-Virgo-KAGRA network and are released in the Gravitational-Wave Transient Catalog. Among these events, 83 cases are definitely binary black hole mergers since the masses of all…

General Relativity and Quantum Cosmology · Physics 2024-12-20 Xiao-Fei Dong , Yong-Feng Huang , Zhi-Bin Zhang , Xiu-Juan Li , Ze-Cheng Zou , Chen-Ran Hu , Chen Deng , Yang Liu

Advanced LIGO \& Advanced Virgo are detecting a large number of binary stellar origin black hole (BH) mergers. A promising channel for accelerated BH merger lies in active galactic nucleus (AGN) disks of gas around super-masssive black…

High Energy Astrophysical Phenomena · Physics 2020-10-07 B. McKernan , K. E. S. Ford , R. O'Shaughnessy

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.…

High Energy Astrophysical Phenomena · Physics 2026-01-23 Jakob Stegmann , Davide Gerosa , Isobel Romero-Shaw , Giulia Fumagalli , Hiromichi Tagawa , Lorenz Zwick

The dense and gaseous environments of active galactic nuclei (AGNs) can catalyze repeated mergers of stellar-mass black holes (BHs), potentially explaining the high-mass tail of binary black hole (BBH) mergers observed by LIGO-Virgo-KAGRA…

High Energy Astrophysical Phenomena · Physics 2025-08-22 Maria Paola Vaccaro

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)…

High Energy Astrophysical Phenomena · Physics 2026-04-01 Jakob Stegmann , Fabio Antonini , Aleksandra Olejak , Sylvia Biscoveanu , Vivien Raymond , Stefano Rinaldi , Elizabeth Flanagan

We conduct a thorough Bayesian analysis of the possibility that the black hole merger events seen in gravitational waves are primordial black hole (PBH) mergers. Using the latest merger rate models for PBH binaries drawn from a lognormal…

Cosmology and Nongalactic Astrophysics · Physics 2021-01-04 Alex Hall , Andrew D. Gow , Christian T. Byrnes

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

The formation environments of merging binary black holes remain uncertain. While hierarchical assembly in dense stellar clusters has been widely explored as an explanation for black holes exceeding the stellar-mass limit, growth through gas…

High Energy Astrophysical Phenomena · Physics 2026-05-12 I. Bartos , Z. Haiman