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.
hub Canonical reference
Analysis of spin precession in binary black hole systems including quadrupole-monopole interaction
Canonical reference. 88% of citing Pith papers cite this work as background.
15
Pith papers citing it
Background
88% of classified citations
abstract
We analyze in detail the spin precession equations in binary black hole systems, when the tidal torque on a Kerr black hole due to quadrupole-monopole coupling is taken into account. We show that completing the precession equations with this term reveals the existence of a conserved quantity at 2PN order when averaging over orbital motion. This quantity allows one to solve the (orbit-averaged) precession equations exactly in the case of equal masses and arbitrary spins, neglecting radiation reaction. For unequal masses, an exact solution does not exist in closed form, but we are still able to derive accurate approximate analytic solutions. We also show how to incorporate radiation reaction effects into our analytic solutions adiabatically, and compare the results to solutions obtained numerically. For various configurations of the binary, the relative difference in the accumulated orbital phase computed using our analytic solutions versus a full numerical solution vary from about 0.3% to 1.8% over the 80 - 140 orbital cycles accumulated while sweeping over the orbital frequency range 20 - 300 Hz. This typically corresponds to a discrepancy of order 5-6 radians. While this may not be accurate enough for implementation in LIGO template banks, we still believe that our new solutions are potentially quite useful for comparing numerical relativity simulations of spinning binary black hole systems with post-Newtonian theory. They can also be used to gain more understanding of precession effects, with potential application to the gravitational recoil problem, and to provide semi-analytical templates for spinning, precessing binaries.
hub tools
citation-role summary
background 7
method 1
citation-polarity summary
representative citing papers
An analytical 2PN solution is constructed for the orbital and spin dynamics of eccentric, arbitrarily spinning binary black holes, with spin oscillations retained only at 1.5PN accuracy.
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.
IMRPhenomXPHM is a new computationally efficient phenomenological model for precessing binary black hole gravitational-wave signals that incorporates higher-order modes via twisting-up maps from non-precessing waveforms.
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.
Maximum-likelihood-based posterior predictive checks detect model misspecification better than event-level versions for uncertain spin tilts, but current detector sensitivity limits their power; the Gaussian Component Spins model underpredicts high spin magnitudes and overpredicts anti-aligned tilts
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.
Spin sorting with the default spin model distinguishes spinning and nonspinning binary black hole populations in simulations and shows real data rule out a fully nonspinning population but allow mixed ones with up to 80% nonspinning sources.
Spin prior choices propagate into tests of GR via the 1.5PN deviation parameter δφ̂3 in a non-trivial, event-dependent way, with stronger effects for short-inspiral events and partial degeneracy with χ_eff when the deviation is included.
Reanalysis finds GW190521 prefers hyperbolic waveforms over quasi-circular precessing ones with ln Bayes factor 3.71, while other high-mass events and GW231123 favor the latter; mock signals indicate distinguishability challenges for high-mass precessing cases.
Version 2.1 of the precession code extends post-Newtonian modeling of spinning black-hole binaries to eccentric orbits via a decorator-based adaptation and new evolutionary equations.
GWTC-2.1 adds eight new high-significance compact binary coalescence events to the prior catalog, extending the observed black hole mass range and including candidates inside the pair-instability mass gap.
Population-informed hierarchical parameter estimation is required for unbiased astrophysical interpretation of gravitational-wave events rather than using standard individual posteriors with reference priors.
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.
citing papers explorer
-
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.