A new gravitational wave event reveals a binary black hole merger with total mass 190-265 solar masses, indicating black holes can form via gravitational-wave driven mergers beyond standard stellar channels.
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dynesty: A Dynamic Nested Sampling Package for Estimating Bayesian Posteriors and Evidences
Mixed citation behavior. Most common role is method (52%).
abstract
We present dynesty, a public, open-source, Python package to estimate Bayesian posteriors and evidences (marginal likelihoods) using Dynamic Nested Sampling. By adaptively allocating samples based on posterior structure, Dynamic Nested Sampling has the benefits of Markov Chain Monte Carlo algorithms that focus exclusively on posterior estimation while retaining Nested Sampling's ability to estimate evidences and sample from complex, multi-modal distributions. We provide an overview of Nested Sampling, its extension to Dynamic Nested Sampling, the algorithmic challenges involved, and the various approaches taken to solve them. We then examine dynesty's performance on a variety of toy problems along with several astronomical applications. We find in particular problems dynesty can provide substantial improvements in sampling efficiency compared to popular MCMC approaches in the astronomical literature. More detailed statistical results related to Nested Sampling are also included in the Appendix.
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representative citing papers
The first informative astrophysical calibration of gravitational-wave detectors is reported using GW240925 and GW250207.
GW241011 data shows consistency with Kerr black holes for both quadrupole and octupole moments and delivers the first observational bounds on spin-induced octupole deviations.
The central compact object 1E 1207.4-5209 emits pulsed radio waves at its 0.4-second spin period, revealing it as a faint radio pulsar.
Native-resolution retrievals on 0.97-5.27 micron JWST spectra of VHS 1256 b find a ~79% cloud deck, solar-like metallicity and C/O, and depleted 18O in a partially cloudy disequilibrium atmosphere.
LRD host galaxies show average metallicity 0.08 Z_sun with narrow stable range, challenging pristine-gas formation models while ruling out typical local AGN.
All five NSBH events are consistent with zero line-of-sight acceleration; the joint posterior for GW200105_162426 disfavors both zero LOSA and zero eccentricity at 90% credibility.
First leading-PN derivation of horizon absorption in eccentric precessing BBH inspirals, incorporated into pyEFPEHM, with estimates showing parameter biases in eccentric systems at moderate SNR.
Introduces MGIC_rv, an information criterion that combines conditional RV likelihood with an effective parameter count for selecting multi-GP models focused on radial velocities.
Presents new NSBH waveform models IMRPhenomXHM_NSBH, SEOBNRv5HM_ROM_NRTidalv3_NSBH, and IMRPhenomXPHM_NSBH incorporating higher modes and tidal effects via NRTidalv3 extensions, validated against NR simulations and applied to GWTC events.
Deep interferometric observations of a z≈1.12 barred spiral reveal bar-driven molecular inflows at a rate matching the galaxy's star formation rate of ~36 M⊙/yr.
A reference-frequency-independent detection statistic for eccentric binary mergers is introduced and applied to GW200105, yielding ln B ≤ 0.9 in favor of the eccentric aligned-spin model over the quasi-circular precessing model.
GreyRing model based on greybody factors reproduces numerical relativity ringdown signals with mismatches of order 10^{-6} and enables a new post-merger consistency test of general relativity applied to GW250114.
Presents a practical fully time-domain end-to-end likelihood for gravitational-wave inference with structured linear algebra and GPU acceleration.
LIGO and Virgo detected 39 compact binary coalescence events in O3a, including 13 new ones, with black hole binaries up to 150 solar masses and the first significantly asymmetric mass ratios.
UVJ colors saturate below log(sSFR) ~ -10.5; new UV/MIR color-color diagrams allow more efficient selection of galaxies with substantially lower ongoing star formation.
Panchromatic JWST spectrum of WASP-121 b detects SiO and measures refractory-to-volatile ratios 3x stellar, consistent with mixed solid-gas accretion or migration with continued solid accretion.
ACG models embed the observationally preferred phantom-crossing dark energy behavior inside a consistent Horndeski Lagrangian and achieve data fits of similar quality to w0waCDM while being narrowed by perturbative probes.
Two LIGO transients are consistent with domain wall signals from a shared scalar field but binary black hole models remain favored, with a morphological degeneracy identified.
SEOBNRv6EHM reduces parameter biases for eccentric binaries versus prior models and shows mild support for eccentricity in five catalog events plus comparable unbound fits for three high-mass events.
NIHAO simulations reproduce the Rd-r0 relation and its mild evolution from z=2 to z=0 through stellar feedback without dark matter modifications.
Neural network surrogate approximates precessing compact binary gravitational waveforms up to 1000x faster than the base EOB model with validated accuracy.
pyEFPEHM extends prior PN models to include higher-order quasi-circular phasing, generalized precession solutions, and eccentric corrections up to 1PN in selected multipoles for eccentric precessing binaries with matter effects.
Unmodeled point-mass lensing produces a spurious nonzero graviton mass posterior in GW231123 that vanishes when lensing is included in the analysis.
citing papers explorer
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Testing the Kerr hypothesis beyond the quadrupole with GW241011
GW241011 data shows consistency with Kerr black holes for both quadrupole and octupole moments and delivers the first observational bounds on spin-induced octupole deviations.
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Novel ringdown tests of general relativity with black hole greybody factors
GreyRing model based on greybody factors reproduces numerical relativity ringdown signals with mismatches of order 10^{-6} and enables a new post-merger consistency test of general relativity applied to GW250114.
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Accelerated Time-domain Analysis for Gravitational Wave Astronomy
Presents a practical fully time-domain end-to-end likelihood for gravitational-wave inference with structured linear algebra and GPU acceleration.
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Fast neural network surrogate for multimodal effective-one-body gravitational waveforms from generically precessing compact binaries
Neural network surrogate approximates precessing compact binary gravitational waveforms up to 1000x faster than the base EOB model with validated accuracy.
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Post-Newtonian inspiral waveform model for eccentric precessing binaries with higher-order modes and matter effects
pyEFPEHM extends prior PN models to include higher-order quasi-circular phasing, generalized precession solutions, and eccentric corrections up to 1PN in selected multipoles for eccentric precessing binaries with matter effects.
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Signatures of a subpopulation of hierarchical mergers in the GWTC-4 gravitational-wave dataset
GWTC-4 data show a transition to nearly all hierarchical mergers above 46 solar masses, with the hierarchical rate peaking at 15.7 solar masses, indicating mass-dependent substructure in black hole spins.
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Evidence for eccentricity in the population of binary black holes observed by LIGO-Virgo-KAGRA
Bayesian inference on LVK O1-O3 events with eccentric aligned-spin waveforms yields log10 Bayes factors of 1.77-4.75 favoring eccentricity for GW200129, GW190701 and GW200208_22, and >99.5% probability that at least one of 57 events is eccentric under an astrophysically motivated rate prior.
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GW250114: testing Hawking's area law and the Kerr nature of black holes
GW250114 data confirm the remnant black hole ringdown frequencies lie within 30% of Kerr predictions and that the final horizon area is larger than the sum of the progenitors' areas to high credibility.
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Gravitational-wave astronomy requires population-informed parameter estimation
Population-informed hierarchical parameter estimation is required for unbiased astrophysical interpretation of gravitational-wave events rather than using standard individual posteriors with reference priors.
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GWTC-3: Compact Binary Coalescences Observed by LIGO and Virgo During the Second Part of the Third Observing Run
GWTC-3 catalogs 90 compact binary coalescence events with p_astro > 0.5 from LIGO and Virgo's first three observing runs, including the first confident neutron star-black hole binaries.
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Improved Constraints on Non-Kerr Deviations from Binary Black Hole Inspirals Using GWTC-4 Data
Bayesian constraints from GWTC-4 binary black hole inspirals show Johannsen metric deformation parameters α13 and ε3 consistent with zero, supporting the Kerr hypothesis.