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The Low Effective Spin of Binary Black Holes and Implications for Individual Gravitational-Wave Events
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abstract
While the Advanced LIGO and Virgo gravitational-wave experiments now regularly observe binary black hole mergers, the evolutionary origin of these events remains a mystery. Analysis of the binary black hole spin distribution may shed light on this mystery, offering a means of discriminating between different binary formation channels. Using the data from Advanced LIGO and Virgo's first and second observing runs, here we seek to carefully characterize the distribution of effective spin among binary black holes, hierarchically measuring the distribution's mean $\mu$ and variance $\sigma^2$ while accounting for selection effects and degeneracies between spin and other black hole parameters. We demonstrate that the known population of binary black holes have spins that are both small, with $\mu \sim 0$, and very narrowly distributed, with $\sigma^2 \leq 0.07$ at 95% credibility. We then explore what these ensemble properties imply about the spins of individual binary black hole mergers, re-analyzing existing gravitational-wave events with a population-informed prior on their effective spin. The binary black hole GW170729, which previously excluded effective spin equal to zero, is now consistent with zero effective spin at ~10% credibility. More broadly, we find that uninformative spin priors generally yield overestimates for the effective spin magnitudes of compact binary mergers.
Forward citations
Cited by 7 Pith papers
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Uncovering Hierarchical Sub-Population of Binary Black Holes
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Gravitational-wave astronomy requires population-informed parameter estimation
Single-event GW parameter estimates under reference priors are population-biased; hierarchical, population-informed re-analysis is needed and changes the identification of the most extreme black holes in the catalog.
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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 ...
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Gravitational-wave astronomy requires population-informed parameter estimation
Population-informed hierarchical parameter estimation is required for unbiased astrophysical interpretation of gravitational-wave events rather than using standard individual posteriors with reference priors.
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The first decade of gravitational-wave measurements of black hole spins
A decade of gravitational-wave data shows most merging stellar-mass black holes have small spins, with subdominant fast-spinning, misaligned, and hierarchical-merger populations.
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The first decade of gravitational-wave measurements of black hole spins
A review summarizing formation-channel predictions, waveform effects, and population-level constraints on stellar-mass black hole spins from the first decade of gravitational-wave observations.
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