Pith. sign in

REVIEW 7 cited by

The anti-aligned spin of GW191109: glitch mitigation and its implications

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 2409.03912 v4 pith:DWSC42BG submitted 2024-09-05 gr-qc astro-ph.HEastro-ph.IM

Rhiannon Udall , Sophie Hourihane , Simona Miller , Derek Davis , Katerina Chatziioannou , Max Isi , Howard Deshong This is my paper · ORCID
classification gr-qcastro-ph.HEastro-ph.IM
keywords glitchanti-alignedspingw191109datainferredinferencelight
verification ladder T0 review T1 audit T2 compute T3 formal
0 comments
read the original abstract

With a high total mass and an inferred effective spin anti-aligned with the orbital axis at the 99.9% level, GW191109 is one of the most promising candidates for a dynamical formation origin among gravitational wave events observed so far. However, the data containing GW191109 are afflicted with terrestrial noise transients, i.e., detector glitches, generated by the scattering of laser light in both LIGO detectors. We study the implications of the glitch(es) on the inferred properties and astrophysical interpretation of GW191109. Using time- and frequency-domain analysis methods, we isolate the critical data for spin inference to 35 - 40 Hz and 0.1 - 0.04 s before the merger in LIGO Livingston, directly coincident with the glitch. Using two models of glitch behavior, one tailored to slow scattered light and one more generic, we perform joint inference of the glitch and binary parameters. When the glitch is modeled as slow scattered light, the binary parameters favor anti-aligned spins, in agreement with existing interpretations. When more flexible glitch modeling based on sine-Gaussian wavelets is used instead, a bimodal aligned/anti-aligned solution emerges. The anti-aligned spin mode is correlated with a weaker inferred glitch and preferred by ~ 70 : 30 compared to the aligned spin mode and a stronger inferred glitch. We conclude that if we assume that the data are only impacted by slow scattering noise, then the anti-aligned spin inference is robust. However, the data alone cannot validate this assumption and resolve the anti-aligned spin and potentially dynamical formation history of GW191109.

Discussion (0). Continue with ORCID to comment.

Forward citations

Cited by 7 Pith papers

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

  1. When (not) to trust Monte Carlo approximations for hierarchical Bayesian inference

    astro-ph.HE 2025-09 conditional novelty 7.0 of 10

    A unified error statistic E-hat measures information lost to Monte Carlo noise in hierarchical Bayesian inference, with a recommended cutoff of 0.2 bits.

  2. A comprehensive look into the accuracy of SpEC binary black hole waveforms

    gr-qc 2025-10 conditional novelty 6.0 of 10

    Simulated black-hole merger waveforms accumulate numerical error over time, but the merger stage is not intrinsically less accurate once aligned on its own, and resolution-exchanged differences show no systematic bias...

  3. No Glitch in the Matrix: Robust Reconstruction of Gravitational Wave Signals Under Noise Artifacts

    gr-qc 2024-12 conditional novelty 6.0 of 10

    AWaRe, a neural network trained on clean binary black hole signals, reconstructs gravitational wave waveforms from LIGO data contaminated by glitches without any glitch-specific training.

  4. Fast frequency-domain gravitational waveforms for precessing binaries with a new twist

    gr-qc 2024-12 conditional novelty 6.0 of 10

    IMRPhenomXPHM-SpinTaylor computes precession angles by numerically solving post-Newtonian spin equations in the frequency domain and improves match to numerical relativity from mean mismatch 6.3e-3 to 5.1e-3.

  5. GWSkyNet-Multi II: an updated machine learning model for rapid classification of gravitational-wave events

    astro-ph.IM 2025-02 conditional novelty 5.0 of 10

    An updated 188-parameter neural network classifies LVK gravitational-wave alerts into four source categories and matches updated LVK labels for 93% of O4 events.

  6. Structure and Skewness of the Effective Inspiral Spin Distribution of Binary Black Hole Mergers

    astro-ph.HE 2025-01 conditional novelty 5.0 of 10

    The effective inspiral spin distribution of GWTC-3 black hole binaries is skewed toward positive values, implying a modest preferentially aligned subpopulation, no strong bimodality, and at least about 20% negative-sp...

  7. The first decade of gravitational-wave measurements of black hole spins

    gr-qc 2026-06 unverdicted novelty 1.0 of 10

    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.

Pith tools