Simulations show a 40-50 solar-mass black-hole cutoff is not guaranteed to be confidently recovered from GWTC-4-like catalogs, spurious detections are unlikely, and O4 data would reduce cutoff-mass uncertainty by at least 20 percent while yielding only a lower bound on the carbon-alpha reaction rate
Biscoveanu, Astrophys
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abstract
Measurements of the binary black hole spin distribution from the growing catalog of gravitational-wave observations can help elucidate the astrophysical processes shaping the formation and evolution of these systems. Spin-orbit resonances are one process of interest, in which the component spin vectors and the orbital angular momentum align into a common plane and jointly precess about the total angular momentum of the system. These resonances, which occur preferentially in systems formed via isolated binary evolution with strong tidal effects, lead to excesses in the distribution of the azimuthal angle between the projections of the component spin vectors onto the orbital plane at $\phi_{12}=0,\pm\pi$. In this work, we conduct the first hierarchical analysis modeling the population-level distribution of $\phi_{12}$ simultaneously with the other mass and spin parameters for simulated binary black hole populations to determine whether spin-orbit resonances can be reliably constrained. While we are unlikely to find definitive evidence for spin-orbit resonances with a population of the size expected by the end of the ongoing LIGO-Virgo-KAGRA fourth observing run, we correctly recover the various $\phi_{12}$ distributions we simulate within uncertainties. We find that we can place meaningful constraints on the relative excesses at $\phi_{12}=0,\pm\pi$, which encodes information about binary mass transfer. We can also distinguish between fully isotropic spin angle distributions and those with features in the spin azimuth and tilt distributions. Thus, we show that population-level measurements of the $\phi_{12}$ distribution offer a reliable, novel way to probe binary formation channels, dynamics, and mass transfer with gravitational-wave observations.
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GWTC-5 chirp-mass peaks form a ~1.9-spaced ladder with a new ~19 M⊙ rung matching predicted 2G+3G mergers, unifying prior 1G+2G spin-transition groups under one hierarchical scenario.
Simulations with a new tidal model in COMPAS predict that merging binary black holes from isolated evolution are strongly biased to low effective spins, with one third below 0.05 and only 3% above 0.5, but the high-spin fraction rises to 15% at higher redshifts.
citing papers explorer
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Measurement prospects for the pair-instability mass cutoff with gravitational waves
Simulations show a 40-50 solar-mass black-hole cutoff is not guaranteed to be confidently recovered from GWTC-4-like catalogs, spurious detections are unlikely, and O4 data would reduce cutoff-mass uncertainty by at least 20 percent while yielding only a lower bound on the carbon-alpha reaction rate
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The Chirp-Mass Ladder: A New Rung Emerges
GWTC-5 chirp-mass peaks form a ~1.9-spaced ladder with a new ~19 M⊙ rung matching predicted 2G+3G mergers, unifying prior 1G+2G spin-transition groups under one hierarchical scenario.
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Modern tidal interaction models for rapid binary population synthesis: II. Binary black hole formation, mergers, and spins
Simulations with a new tidal model in COMPAS predict that merging binary black holes from isolated evolution are strongly biased to low effective spins, with one third below 0.05 and only 3% above 0.5, but the high-spin fraction rises to 15% at higher redshifts.