PIRSA:21110010

The spins of binary black holes following LIGO and Virgo’s third observing run

Biscoveanu, A. (2021). The spins of binary black holes following LIGO and Virgo’s third observing run . Perimeter Institute. https://pirsa.org/21110010

Biscoveanu, Andrea. The spins of binary black holes following LIGO and Virgo’s third observing run . Perimeter Institute, Nov. 11, 2021, https://pirsa.org/21110010 

          @misc{ pirsa_PIRSA:21110010,
            doi = {10.48660/21110010},
            url = {https://pirsa.org/21110010},
            author = {Biscoveanu, Andrea},
            keywords = {Strong Gravity},
            language = {en},
            title = {The spins of binary black holes following LIGO and Virgo{\textquoteright}s third observing run },
            publisher = {Perimeter Institute},
            year = {2021},
            month = {nov},
            note = {PIRSA:21110010 see, \url{https://pirsa.org}}
          }

Andrea Biscoveanu

Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT)

Talk number
PIRSA:21110010
Collection
Talk Type
Subject
Abstract

The growing catalog of gravitational wave signals from binary black hole mergers has allowed us to probe the properties of these compact objects more precisely than ever before. In particular, binary black hole spin measurements have the potential to reveal the formation channels of these systems. An accurate and precise measurement of the spins of individual merging black holes is required to model their population-level distributions. In this talk, I will discuss recent work on the measurability of individual black hole spins focusing on those in heavy binaries. I will also present novel spin parameterizations that facilitate the study of specific features of binary black hole evolutionary histories. I will contextualize these individual spin measurements within the observed population of binary black holes and conclude by presenting the latest LIGO-Virgo results for the black hole spin distribution.