Pith Number

pith:ICESHCAA

pith:2026:ICESHCAASU3CHK4U7COQPYB5MR

not attested not anchored not stored refs resolved

Polarization Analysis of Ringdown Signals

Max Isi, Nicole Khusid, Will Farr

Ringdown signals from binary black hole mergers carry measurable circular polarization that directly infers the source inclination angle.

arxiv:2605.15271 v1 · 2026-05-14 · gr-qc · astro-ph.HE

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\pithnumber{ICESHCAASU3CHK4U7COQPYB5MR}

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4 Citations open

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The bundle contains the canonical record plus signed events. A mirror can host it anywhere and recompute the same current state with the deterministic merge algorithm.

Claims

C1strongest claim

We show that we can measure the degree of circular polarization and handedness of ringdown signals like those of GW150914, even if only the two LIGO detectors are available; such a polarization measurement can be translated into an inferred source inclination assuming the reflection symmetry above, again using the ringdown signal alone.

C2weakest assumption

The assumption that merging black holes with spins (anti)aligned to the orbital angular momentum excite modes with equatorial reflection symmetry, which constrains two of the four degrees of freedom per mode and fixes the relationship between polarization amplitudes and phases via the inclination angle.

C3one line summary

Constrained polarization model for Kerr ringdown modes enables inclination inference from two-detector data for non-precessing mergers but introduces biases when applied to precessing systems.

References

78 extracted · 78 resolved · 29 Pith anchors

[1] Post-Newtonian Theory for Gravitational Waves 2014 · arXiv:1310.1528

[2] The basic physics of the binary black hole merger GW150914 2017 · arXiv:1608.01940

[3] R. P. Kerr, Phys. Rev. Lett.11, 237 (1963) 1963

[4] C. V. Vishveshwara, Phys. Rev. D1, 2870 (1970) 1970

[5] S. A. Teukolsky, Astrophys. J.185, 635 (1973) 1973

Formal links

1 machine-checked theorem link

Receipt and verification

First computed	2026-05-20T00:00:49.864705Z
Builder	pith-number-builder-2026-05-17-v1
Signature	Pith Ed25519 (`pith-v1-2026-05`) · public key
Schema	pith-number/v1.0

Canonical hash

4089238800953623ab94f89d07e03d646be4bf841355648d6716c65bdccd5378

Aliases

arxiv: 2605.15271 · arxiv_version: 2605.15271v1 · doi: 10.48550/arxiv.2605.15271 · pith_short_12: ICESHCAASU3C · pith_short_16: ICESHCAASU3CHK4U · pith_short_8: ICESHCAA

Agent API

Resolver JSON Graph JSON Events JSON Schema Signing key

Verify this Pith Number yourself

curl -sH 'Accept: application/ld+json' https://pith.science/pith/ICESHCAASU3CHK4U7COQPYB5MR \
  | jq -c '.canonical_record' \
  | python3 -c "import sys,json,hashlib; b=json.dumps(json.loads(sys.stdin.read()), sort_keys=True, separators=(',',':'), ensure_ascii=False).encode(); print(hashlib.sha256(b).hexdigest())"
# expect: 4089238800953623ab94f89d07e03d646be4bf841355648d6716c65bdccd5378

Canonical record JSON

{
  "metadata": {
    "abstract_canon_sha256": "6efe23a63921b2162b6a446fcb81f80dac892547263a9494752f530f371f44c8",
    "cross_cats_sorted": [
      "astro-ph.HE"
    ],
    "license": "http://arxiv.org/licenses/nonexclusive-distrib/1.0/",
    "primary_cat": "gr-qc",
    "submitted_at": "2026-05-14T18:00:02Z",
    "title_canon_sha256": "e67170a0d3cf0de4a6beb044dc56c520102fa0c6e1878cc6cbcda2e7f34493a7"
  },
  "schema_version": "1.0",
  "source": {
    "id": "2605.15271",
    "kind": "arxiv",
    "version": 1
  }
}