Pith. sign in

REVIEW 17 cited by

Mind the gap: The location of the lower edge of the pair instability supernovae black hole mass gap

Not yet reviewed by Pith; the record is open.

Re-run · record.json Download PDF Read on arXiv ↗

This paper has not been read by Pith yet. Machine review is queued; the pith claim, tier, and objections will appear here once it completes.

SPECIMEN: schema-true, not a live event

T0 review · schema-true

One-sentence machine reading of the paper's core claim.

pith:XXXXXXXX · record.json · timestamp

arxiv 1910.12874 v1 pith:57RBB6KK submitted 2019-10-28 astro-ph.SR astro-ph.HE

R. Farmer , M. Renzo , S. E de Mink , P. Marchant , S. Justham This is my paper · ORCID
classification astro-ph.SRastro-ph.HE
keywords massodotlocationapproxedgeevolutionlowerrobust
verification ladder T0 review T1 audit T2 compute T3 formal

Signed reviews

No signed human review yet.

0 comments
abstract

Gravitational-wave detections are now starting to probe the mass distribution of stellar-mass black holes (BHs). Robust predictions from stellar models are needed to interpret these. Theory predicts the existence of a gap in the BH mass distribution because of pair-instability supernova. The maximum BH mass below the gap is the result of pulsational mass loss. We evolve massive helium stars through their late hydrodynamical phases of evolution using the open-source MESA stellar evolution code. We find that the location of the lower edge of the mass gap at 45$M_\odot$ is remarkably robust against variations in the metallicity ($\approx 3M_\odot$), the treatment of internal mixing ($\approx 1M_\odot$), stellar wind mass loss ($\approx 4M_\odot$), making it the most robust predictions for the final stages of massive star evolution. The reason is that the onset of the instability is dictated by the near-final core mass, which in turn sets the resulting BH mass. However, varying $^{12}C\left(\alpha,\gamma\right)^{16}O$ reaction rate within its $1\sigma$ uncertainties shifts the location of the gap between $40M_\odot$ and $56M_\odot$. We provide updated analytic fits for population synthesis simulations. Our results imply that the detection of merging BHs can provide constraints on nuclear astrophysics. Furthermore, the robustness against metallicity suggests that there is a universal maximum for the location of the lower edge of the gap, which is insensitive to the formation environment and redshift for first-generation BHs. This is promising for the possibility to use the location of the gap as a "standard siren" across the Universe.

Discussion (0). Continue with ORCID to comment.

Forward citations

Cited by 17 Pith papers

Reviewed papers in the Pith corpus that reference this work. Sorted by Pith novelty score. Full citation record

  1. A Four-dimensional Model-agnostic Probe into the Astrophysical Origins of Binary Black Hole Subpopulations

    astro-ph.HE 2026-07 conditional novelty 7.0 of 10

    A GPU-accelerated binned Gaussian process yields the first model-agnostic 4D BBH population in (m1, q, χeff, χp), revealing four mass-based subpopulations and new spin-mass-ratio correlations.

  2. A clear detection of proper motion confirms that the claimed $\mathbf{z\simeq32}$ galaxy candidate, "Capotauro'', is a Y-type brown dwarf

    astro-ph.GA 2026-08 accept novelty 6.0 of 10

    Capotauro, previously a candidate galaxy at z about 32, is confirmed as a Y-type brown dwarf near 730 pc by a 6.2 sigma proper motion measured over 3.5 years.

  3. Ensemble-Based Residual Tests of GW231123 across Waveform Models

    gr-qc 2026-08 conditional novelty 6.0 of 10

    GW231123's residuals are consistent with detector noise for all five waveform models, and the strain-level differences between models are too small to be detected.

  4. The diffraction-lensing interpretation of GW231123 with astrophysical priors

    astro-ph.CO 2026-07 conditional novelty 6.0 of 10

    GW231123 is better fit by a lower-mass merger diffracted by an isolated ~1000 M_sun lens, but astrophysical priors and a frequentist rate estimate make this lensing interpretation unlikely.

  5. Implications of the UV/optical Plateau of AT2018cow

    astro-ph.HE 2026-07 conditional novelty 6.0 of 10

    A wind-and-irradiation disk model fits the AT2018cow UV plateau with accretor masses from 1.4 to ~100 solar masses, removing the need for a >200 solar-mass black hole.

  6. Reconstruction of Primordial Power Spectrum from Gravitational Waves of High-Redshift Black Hole Binaries

    astro-ph.CO 2026-07 conditional novelty 6.0 of 10

    Gradient-descent inversion of redshifted BBH mass distributions recovers the PBH mass function and, via regularized Press-Schechter, a candidate O(10^{-2}) bump in the small-scale primordial power spectrum.

  7. Formation of rotating supergiants via stellar mergers in dense clusters: Implications for black hole natal spins

    astro-ph.HE 2026-07 conditional novelty 6.0 of 10

    Stellar mergers with mass ratio q≳0.3 in young clusters can produce blue-supergiant progenitors that leave black holes with dimensionless spins a≃0.5–0.8, reducing post-merger retention and hierarchical-merger rates.

  8. Signatures of a subpopulation of hierarchical mergers in the GWTC-4 gravitational-wave dataset

    gr-qc 2026-01 unverdicted novelty 6.0 of 10

    Using a joint effective-spin and precession-spin model on 155 gravitational-wave events, the authors infer that the hierarchical (second-generation) merger fraction rises sharply above ~46 M_sun and peaks again near 1...

  9. Evidence for Three Subpopulations of Merging Binary Black Holes at Different Primary Masses

    astro-ph.HE 2025-09 conditional novelty 6.0 of 10

    GWTC-4 data supports three subpopulations of merging black holes with transition masses at about 28 and 40 solar masses, differing in mass ratio and spin.

  10. Improving gravitational wave search sensitivity with TIER: Trigger Inference using Extended strain Representation

    gr-qc 2025-07 conditional novelty 6.0 of 10

    A machine learning classifier trained on the extended noise environment around gravitational wave candidates improves search sensitivity for heavy, unequal-mass black hole mergers by up to roughly 20 percent.

  11. Modeling Gravitational Wave Bias from 3D Power Spectra of Spectroscopic Surveys

    astro-ph.GA 2025-06 conditional novelty 6.0 of 10

    Using mock gravitational wave catalogs built from the SDSS DR7 galaxy survey, the clustering bias of GW sources is most sensitive to host stellar mass, secondarily to star formation rate, and nearly insensitive to met...

  12. The Gravitational Wave Bias Parameter from Angular Power Spectra: Bridging Between Galaxies and Binary Black Holes

    astro-ph.GA 2024-11 conditional novelty 6.0 of 10

    The gravitational wave bias of mock binary black holes increases with the pivot mass of the assumed host galaxy mass selection, and can exceed the galaxy bias by up to about 30 percent only for steep host probability slopes.

  13. A Possible Triple Formation Scenario of Binary Black Hole Merge With One In Pair-instability Supernova Mass Gap

    astro-ph.HE 2026-07 conditional novelty 5.0 of 10

    An isolated hierarchical triple channel with chemically homogeneous evolution and triple common envelope can produce PISN mass-gap BBH mergers matching GW190706 at ~22% of the observed rate.

  14. Inferring the pair-instability mass gap from gravitational wave data

    astro-ph.HE 2025-06 conditional novelty 5.0 of 10

    Non-parametric analysis of GWTC-3 finds a transition at roughly 46 solar masses above which the effective spin distribution broadens and becomes consistent with symmetry around zero, consistent with second-generation ...

  15. Considering lensing effect on gravitational wave signals from black holes in mass gap

    astro-ph.HE 2025-12 reject novelty 4.0 of 10

    Gravitational lensing could in principle explain apparent mass-gap black-hole mergers, but the required magnifications are μ≈12–39 for GW190521 and μ≈320–444 for GW231123 depending on assumptions—and the paper's abstr...

  16. Binary Black Hole Phase Space Discovers the Signature of Pair Instability Supernovae Mass Gap

    astro-ph.HE 2025-09 reject novelty 4.0 of 10

    Applying a phase-space overlap method to GWTC-4, the paper claims first-generation black holes are truncated near 45.5 solar masses, but the cutoff follows from the assumed exponential mass prior rather than from the data.

  17. Stellar-Mass Black Holes

    astro-ph.HE 2025-07 conditional novelty 1.0 of 10

    A concise review of stellar-mass black hole physics and observations, plus a speculative interstellar mission concept.

Pith tools