Constraining Formation Models of Binary Black Holes with Gravitational-wave Observations

By Michael Zevin, C. Pankow, C. Rodriguez, L. Sampson, E. Chase, Vicky Kalogera, F. Rasio. 2017

151 citations recorded by the source corpus.

Gravitational waves (GWs) from binary black hole (BBH) mergers provide a new probe of massive-star evolution and the formation channels of binary compact objects. By coupling the growing sample of BBH systems with population synthesis models, we can begin to constrain the parameters of such models and glean unprecedented knowledge about the inherent physical processes that underpin binary stellar evolution. In this study, we apply a hierarchical Bayesian model to mass measurements from a synthetic GW sample to constrain the physical prescriptions in population models and the relative fraction of systems generated from various channels. We employ population models of two canonical formation scenarios in our analysis—isolated binary evolution involving a common-envelope phase and dynamical formation within globular clusters—with model variations for different black hole natal kick prescriptions. We show that solely with chirp mass measurements, it is possible to constrain natal kick prescriptions and the relative fraction of systems originating from each formation channel with of confident detections. This framework can be extended to include additional formation scenarios, model parameters, and measured properties of the compact binary.

Subfields: Astronomy and Astrophysics, Instrumentation

View Paper: https://www.semanticscholar.org/paper/cf72db79e8dedd2765bd1f69673a134b6db914d3

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In Astronomy and Astrophysics

1. Michela Mapelli
2. N. Giacobbo
3. D. Holz
4. Mario Spera
5. Maya Fishbach
6. Ilya Mandel
7. F. Antonini
8. E. Thrane

In Instrumentation

1. Maya Fishbach
2. D. Holz
3. Michela Mapelli
4. E. Thrane
5. Colm Talbot
6. N. Giacobbo
7. W. Farr
8. T. Bulik

Citations in the corpus

• Measuring the Binary Black Hole Mass Spectrum with an Astrophysically Motivated Parameterization (2018, background): “Stevenson et al. (2015), Barrett et al. (2017), and Zevin et al. (2017) compare population synthesis models with different physical assumptions and show that the predicted mass distributions can be distinguished using O(10) observations.”
• Eccentric Black Hole Mergers in Dense Star Clusters: The Role of Binary–Binary Encounters (2018, background): “Mass distributions may also have utility once dozens to hundreds of observations are made (Stevenson et al. 2015; Mandel et al. 2016; Zevin et al. 2017) or if second generation BH mergers are found with masses in the putative pair instability upper mass gap (O’Leary et al. 2016; Fishbach et al.…”
• The cosmic merger rate of neutron stars and black holes (2018, background): “…large impact on the merger rate of compact objects (see e.g. Portegies Zwart & McMillan 2000; Mapelli et al. 2013; Mapelli & Zampieri 2014; Ziosi et al. 2014; Rodriguez et al. 2015, 2016; Mapelli 2016; Askar et al. 2017; Kimpson et al. 2016; Banerjee 2017; Zevin et al. 2017; Fujii et al. 2017).”
• Merging black holes in young star clusters (2019, background): “…Mapelli & Zampieri 2014; Ziosi et al. 2014; Rodriguez et al. 2015, 2016; Antonini & Rasio 2016; Mapelli 2016; Kimpson et al. 2016; Hurley et al. 2016; O’Leary et al. 2016; Askar et al. 2017, 2018; Zevin et al. 2017; Samsing 2018; Rodriguez et al. 2018; Antonini et al. 2018; Rastello et al. 2018).”
• One Channel to Rule Them All? Constraining the Origins of Binary Black Holes Using Multiple Formation Pathways (2020, methodology): “We perform hierarchical modeling to place constraints on the parameters influencing our population models using a methodology similar to Zevin et al. (2017).”
• Bayesian inference for compact binary coalescences with bilby: validation and application to the first LIGO–Virgo gravitational-wave transient catalogue (2020, background): “The inferred source parameters can inform our understanding of binary stellar evolution (Stevenson et al. 2015; Abbott et al. 2016d; Zevin et al. 2017; Abbott et al. 2017h; Barrett et al. 2018; Belczynski et al. 2018; Bavera et al. 2020), the equation of state of neutron-star matter (Abbott et al.…”
• 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): “[223] M.”
• Binary Black Hole Population Properties Inferred from the First and Second Observing Runs of Advanced LIGO and Advanced Virgo (2018, background): “…Kovetz et al. 2017; Talbot & Thrane 2017, 2018; Zevin et al. 2017; Barrett et al. 2018; Gerosa et al. 2018; Wysocki et al. 2018) and complementary physics(Abbott et al. 2016f; Stevenson et al. 2017a; Zevin et al. 2017; Chen et al. 2018) will be increasingly accessible as observations accumulate.”
• The cosmic merger rate of stellar black hole binaries from the Illustris simulation (2017, methodology): “Future observations by LIGO-Virgo will likely allow us to put constraints on the natal kicks of BHs (Vitale et al. 2017a,b; Stevenson et al. 2017; Zevin et al. 2017).”