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General-relativistic precession in a black-hole binary

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arxiv 2112.11300 v4 pith:XNBUQ6G2 submitted 2021-12-21 gr-qc astro-ph.HE

classification gr-qcastro-ph.HE
keywords binaryprecessionbeenblackcurrentgeneral-relativisticgravitational-waveobservations
verification ladder T0 review T1 audit T2 compute T3 formal
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The general-relativistic phenomenon of spin-induced orbital precession has not yet been observed in strong-field gravity. Gravitational-wave observations of binary black holes (BBHs) are prime candidates, since we expect the astrophysical binary population to contain precessing binaries. Imprints of precession have been investigated in several signals, but no definitive identification of orbital precession has been reported in any one of the 84 BBH observations to date by the Advanced LIGO and Virgo detectors. Here we report the measurement of strong-field precession in the LIGO-Virgo-Kagra (LVK) gravitational-wave signal GW200129. The binary's orbit precesses at a rate ten orders of magnitude faster than previous weak-field measurements from binary pulsars. We also find that the primary black hole is likely highly spinning. According to current binary population estimates a GW200129-like signal is extremely unlikely, and therefore presents a direct challenge to many current binary formation models.

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Cited by 15 Pith papers

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    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 o...

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    Parametric models incorporating waveform phase and amplitude uncertainties mitigate systematic errors in gravitational wave parameter estimation, producing consistent results across models and raw/deglitched data for ...

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