ILLUMINATING BLACK HOLE BINARY FORMATION CHANNELS WITH SPINS IN ADVANCED LIGO

By C. Rodriguez, Michael Zevin, C. Pankow, V. Kalogera, F. Rasio. 2016

189 citations recorded by the source corpus.

The recent detections of the binary black hole mergers GW150914 and GW151226 have inaugurated the field of gravitational-wave astronomy. For the two main formation channels that have been proposed for these sources, isolated binary evolution in galactic fields and dynamical formation in dense star clusters, the predicted masses and merger rates overlap significantly, complicating any astrophysical claims that rely on measured masses alone. Here, we examine the distribution of spin–orbit misalignments expected for binaries from the field and from dense star clusters. Under standard assumptions for black hole natal kicks, we find that black hole binaries similar to GW150914 could be formed with significant spin–orbit misalignment only through dynamical processes. In particular, these heavy-black hole binaries can only form with a significant spin–orbit anti-alignment in the dynamical channel. Our results suggest that future detections of merging black hole binaries with measurable spins will allow us to identify the main formation channel for these systems.

Subfields: Astronomy and Astrophysics

View Paper: https://www.semanticscholar.org/paper/31b111c4c05395e9250085a002be14b8ee2f1ad2

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Citations in the corpus

The progenitors of compact-object binaries: impact of metallicity, common envelope and natal kicks (2018, background): “…Colpi et al. 2003; Mapelli et al. 2005; Grindlay et al. 2006; Ivanova et al. 2008; Clausen et al. 2013; Mapelli & Zampieri 2014; Ziosi et al. 2014; Rodriguez et al. 2015, 2016; Mapelli 2016; Askar et al. 2016; Antonini et al. 2017; Petrovich & Antonini 2017; Banerjee 2017; Belczynski et al.…”
Merging black hole binaries with the SEVN code (2018, background): “…et al. 2016; Mapelli & Giacobbo 2018) or from dynamical processes involving BHs in dense star clusters (e.g. Portegies Zwart & McMillan 2000; Colpi et al. 2003; Ziosi et al. 2014; Giersz et al. 2015; Askar et al. 2016; Kimpson et al. 2016; Mapelli 2016; Rodriguez et al. 2016; Banerjee 2017).”
GWTC-2.1: Deep extended catalog of compact binary coalescences observed by LIGO and Virgo during the first half of the third observing run (2021, background): “Nearly aligned spins are preferentially associated with isolated binary evolution [255, 256], while dynamically formed binaries tend to have an isotropically distributed spin orientations [257, 258].”
Most Black Holes Are Born Very Slowly Rotating (2019, background): “It may be difficult to use spin alignment to disentangle BH mergers formed via field binaries from those formed via dynamical interactions (e.g., Rodriguez et al. 2016).”
Eccentric Black Hole Mergers in Dense Star Clusters: The Role of Binary–Binary Encounters (2018, methodology): “We use a few dozen GC models with various initial conditions that are evolved over cosmic time using the Cluster Monte Carlo (CMC) code (Joshi et al. 2000; Chatterjee et al. 2010; Morscher et al. 2013; Rodriguez et al. 2016a).”
Hierarchical analysis of gravitational-wave measurements of binary black hole spin–orbit misalignments (2017, background): “In these environments, it is expected that the distribution of BBH spin–orbit misalignment angles is isotropic (e.g., Rodriguez et al. 2016).”
GWTC-1: A Gravitational-Wave Transient Catalog of Compact Binary Mergers Observed by LIGO and Virgo during the First and Second Observing Runs (2018, background): “The latter favors a formation scenario where no spin alignment process is present, e.g., assembly in globular clusters [172,174].”
One Channel to Rule Them All? Constraining the Origins of Binary Black Holes Using Multiple Formation Pathways (2020, methodology): “…the branching fractions between these channels or constrain uncertain physical processes governing these channels (Stevenson et al. 2015; Rodriguez et al. 2016b; Stevenson et al. 2017; Vitale et al. 2017; Mandel et al. 2017; Zevin et al. 2017; Talbot & Thrane 2017; Farr et al. 2017a,b;…”
Binary Black Hole Population Properties Inferred from the First and Second Observing Runs of Advanced LIGO and Advanced Virgo (2018, background): “Many potential formation channels in the literature(Belczynski et al. 2014; Antonini & Rasio 2016; Inayoshi et al. 2016; Mandel & de Mink 2016; Rodriguez et al. 2016b; Bartos et al. 2017; Mapelli et al. 2017; Kruckow et al. 2018) produce event rates that are compatible with those from the previous…”
Black Hole Mergers From Globular Clusters Observable by LISA I: Eccentric Sources Originating From Relativistic N-body Dynamics (2018, background): “…and the three objects form a hierarchical triple ⋆ jsamsing@princeton.edu; daniel.dorazio@cfa.harvard.edu (e.g., Liu & Lai 2017; Antonini et al. 2017), whereas BBH mergers forming in clusters are expected to have randomized orientations due to frequent exchanges (e.g., Rodriguez et al. 2016c).”
Merging black hole binaries: the effects of progenitor's metallicity, mass-loss rate and Eddington factor (2017, background): “The impact of stellar dynamics on the formation of BHBs is also matter of debate (e.g. Ziosi et al. 2014; Rodriguez et al. 2015, 2016; Mapelli 2016; Askar et al. 2016; Antonini et al. 2017; Banerjee 2017).”
The origin of spin in binary black holes (2019, background): “As pointed out in the literature, the effective inspiral spin parameter is sensitive to the evolutionary path of BBHs (see e.g., Rodriguez et al. 2016).”
Evolutionary roads leading to low effective spins, high black hole masses, and O1/O2 rates for LIGO/Virgo binary black holes (2017, background): “…different spin-orbit misalignment distributions, with dynamical formation generating nearly isotropic distributions (Mandel & O’Shaughnessy 2010; Rodriguez et al. 2016b), while binary evolution favors distributions that show mostly small to moderate misalignments, with only a small fraction of…”