{"paper":{"title":"Compactness Peaks and Subpopulations: Probing Stellar Physics and Formation Channels of Merging Binary Black Holes","license":"http://arxiv.org/licenses/nonexclusive-distrib/1.0/","headline":"","cross_cats":[],"primary_cat":"astro-ph.HE","authors_text":"Shanika Galaudage","submitted_at":"2026-05-25T16:14:33Z","abstract_excerpt":"The growing catalog of gravitational-wave detections from the LIGO-Virgo-KAGRA (LVK) collaboration reveals structure in the binary black hole (BBH) mass distribution, including peaks near m1 = 10 solar masses and m1 = 35 solar masses, a high-mass suppression consistent with the pair-instability supernova gap, and a possible dearth of systems near chirp mass M = 10-12 solar masses. We apply Compactness Peaks + Channels, a stripped-star-motivated five-component population model, to 152 BBH mergers from GWTC-4.0. The model is decisively preferred over the LVK Broken Power Law + 2 Peaks baseline, "},"claims":{"count":0,"items":[],"snapshot_sha256":"258153158e38e3291e3d48162225fcdb2d5a3ed65a07baac614ab91432fd4f57"},"source":{"id":"2605.25994","kind":"arxiv","version":1},"verdict":{"id":null,"model_set":{},"created_at":null,"strongest_claim":"","one_line_summary":"","pipeline_version":null,"weakest_assumption":"","pith_extraction_headline":""},"integrity":{"clean":true,"summary":{"advisory":0,"critical":0,"by_detector":{},"informational":0},"endpoint":"/pith/2605.25994/integrity.json","findings":[],"available":true,"detectors_run":[],"snapshot_sha256":"c28c3603d3b5d939e8dc4c7e95fa8dfce3d595e45f758748cecf8e644a296938"},"references":{"count":0,"sample":[],"resolved_work":0,"snapshot_sha256":"258153158e38e3291e3d48162225fcdb2d5a3ed65a07baac614ab91432fd4f57","internal_anchors":0},"formal_canon":{"evidence_count":0,"snapshot_sha256":"258153158e38e3291e3d48162225fcdb2d5a3ed65a07baac614ab91432fd4f57"},"author_claims":{"count":0,"strong_count":0,"snapshot_sha256":"258153158e38e3291e3d48162225fcdb2d5a3ed65a07baac614ab91432fd4f57"},"builder_version":"pith-number-builder-2026-05-17-v1"}