Papers › Determining the population properties of spinning black holes
Determining the population properties of spinning black holes
Colm Talbot, Eric Thrane
The archive published only this paper's code-link row. Authors, date and abstract are from arXiv's metadata (CC0), read from the Kaggle arXiv metadata snapshot of 2026-09-12 where its title matched the archive's; the title is the archive's.
There are at least two formation scenarios consistent with the first gravitational-wave observations of binary black hole mergers. In field models, black hole binaries are formed from stellar binaries that may undergo common envelope evolution. In dynamic models, black hole binaries are formed through capture events in globular clusters. Both classes of models are subject to significant theoretical uncertainties. Nonetheless, the conventional wisdom holds that the distribution of spin orientations of dynamically merging black holes is nearly isotropic while field-model black holes prefer to spin in alignment with the orbital angular momentum. We present a framework in which observations of black hole mergers can be used to measure ensemble properties of black hole spin such as the typical black hole spin misalignment. We show how to obtain constraints on population hyperparameters using minimal assumptions so that the results are not strongly dependent on the uncertain physics of formation models. These data-driven constraints will facilitate tests of theoretical models and help determine the formation history of binary black holes using information encoded in their observed spins. We demonstrate that the ensemble properties of binary detections can be used to search for and characterize the properties of two distinct populations of black hole mergers.
Code
Repository list and official/mentioned flags are the archive's, frozen 2025-07-28. Reachability, where shown, is from one Syntology probe window (2026-09-16 to 2026-09-18); repositories not probed show nothing. GitHub stars are not tracked.
Code Syntology ran Syntology
Not run by Syntology. Nothing on this page verifies that the listed code works.
Results from the paper archive 2025-07-28
No leaderboard rows for this paper in the archive.
Report a problem or propose a change · a person checks every report against the paper or source before anything changes; decisions are listed on /corrections