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Constraining the LIGO/Virgo AGN channel with black hole spins

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arxiv 2309.15213 v1 pith:V67S3PTM submitted 2023-09-26 astro-ph.HE astro-ph.GA

B. McKernan , K.E.S. Ford This is my paper
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keywords spinblackdiskholesligoobservationsvirgocomponents
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abstract

Merging black holes (BH) are expected to produce remnants with large dimensionless spin parameters ($a_{\rm spin} \sim 0.7$). However, gravitational wave (GW) observations with LIGO/Virgo suggest that merging BH are consistent with modestly positive but not high spin ($a_{\rm spin} \sim 0.2$), causing tension with models suggesting that high mass mergers are produced by hierarchical merger channels. Some BH also show evidence for strong in-plane spin components. Here we point out that \emph{spin down} of BH due to eccentric prograde post-merger orbits within the gas of an active galactic nucleus (AGN) disk can yield BH with masses in the upper mass gap, but only modestly positive $a_{\rm spin}$, and thus observations of BH with low spin \emph{do not} rule out hierarchical models. We also point out that the fraction of BBH mergers with significant in-plane spin components is a strong test of interactions between disk binary black holes (BBH) and nuclear spheroid orbiters. Spin magnitude and spin tilt constraints from LIGO/Virgo observations of BBH are an excellent test of dynamics of black holes in AGN disks, disk properties and the nuclear clusters interacting with AGN.

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Cited by 5 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 new group of low-spin $50-70M_\odot$ Black Holes and the high pair-instability mass cutoff

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

    GWTC-4.0 reveals low-spin black holes up to ~68.5 Msun, implying a higher pair-instability mass cutoff and a lower 12C(alpha,gamma)16O rate.

  3. Aligned Hierarchical Black Hole Mergers in Active-Galactic-Nuclei Disks Revealed by GWTC-4

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

    GWTC-4 reveals a high-spin, high-mass black hole subpopulation with spin-orbit alignment, interpreted as evidence for hierarchical mergers in AGN disks.

  4. 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 ...

  5. Using gravitational waves and multi-messenger Astronomy to reverse-engineer the properties of galactic nuclei

    astro-ph.HE 2025-06 conditional novelty 4.0 of 10

    The paper proposes that AGN-driven binary black hole merger rates, masses and spins can be used to infer the properties of AGN accretion disks and nuclear star clusters across cosmic time.

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