Related papers: GW231123: extreme spins or microglitches?
The recently discovered gravitational wave event, GW231123, is the most massive binary black hole merger detected to date. The inferred source masses of the event fall within the pair-instability supernova mass gap, where black holes formed…
The origin of black hole mergers discovered by the LIGO and Virgo gravitational-wave observatories is currently unknown. GW190521 is the heaviest black hole merger detected so far. Its observed high mass and possible spin-induced orbital…
The first direct observation of a binary neutron star (BNS) merger was a watershed moment in multi-messenger astronomy. However, gravitational waves from GW170817 have only been observed prior to the BNS merger, but electromagnetic…
Detecting orbital eccentricity in a stellar-mass black-hole merger would point to a non-isolated formation channel. Eccentric binaries can form in dense stellar environments such as globular clusters or active galactic nuclei, or from…
Gravitational waves from $\sim 90$ black holes binary systems have currently been detected by the LIGO and Virgo experiments, and their progenitors' properties inferred. This allowed the scientific community to draw conclusions on the…
Two of the dominant channels to produce merging stellar-mass black-hole binaries are believed to be the isolated evolution of binary stars in the field and dynamical formation in star clusters. The first reported black-hole binary event…
The complex astrophysical processes leading to the formation of binary black holes and their eventual merger are imprinted on the spins of the individual black holes. We revisit the astrophysical distribution of those spins based on…
Binary black-hole systems with spins aligned or anti-aligned to the orbital angular momentum provide the natural ground to start detailed studies of the influence of strong-field spin effects on gravitational wave observations of coalescing…
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…
While the majority of gravitational wave (GW) events observed by the LIGO and Virgo detectors are consistent with mergers of binary black holes (BBHs) on quasi-circular orbits, some events are also consistent with non-zero orbital…
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 latest detection of GW231123, a binary black hole (BH) merger with exceptionally large masses and high spins for the incoming components, has been suggested as a smoking gun for hierarchical formation. In this scenario, a first…
Characterizing the properties of black holes is one of the most important science objectives for gravitational-wave observations. Astrophysical evidence suggests that black holes that are nearly extremal (i.e. spins near the theoretical…
GW231123 appears as the most massive binary black hole (BBH) ever observed by the LIGO interferometers with total mass $190-265 M_\odot$. A high observed mass can be explained by the combination of cosmological redshift and gravitational…
Pair instability supernovae are thought to restrict the formation of black holes in the mass range ~50 - 135 solar masses. However, black holes with masses within this "high mass gap" are expected to form as the remnants of binary black…
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…
In gravitational-wave astronomy, as in other scientific disciplines, ``exceptional'' sources attract considerable interest because they challenge our current understanding of the underlying (astro)physical processes. Crucially,…
We report the observation of gravitational waves from two binary black hole coalescences during the fourth observing run of the LIGO--Virgo--KAGRA detector network, GW241011 and GW241110. The sources of these two signals are characterized…
GW190521 is a remarkable gravitational-wave signal on multiple fronts: its source is the most massive black hole binary identified to date and could have spins misaligned with its orbit, leading to spin-induced precession -- an…
We report the observation of gravitational waves from a binary-black-hole coalescence during the first two weeks of LIGO's and Virgo's third observing run. The signal was recorded on April 12, 2019 at 05:30:44 UTC with a network…