Papers › Hints of spin-orbit resonances in the binary black hole population
Hints of spin-orbit resonances in the binary black hole population
Vijay Varma, Sylvia Biscoveanu, Maximiliano Isi, Will M. Farr, Salvatore Vitale
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.
Binary black hole spin measurements from gravitational wave observations can reveal the binary's evolutionary history. In particular, the spin orientations of the component black holes within the orbital plane, ϕ₁ and ϕ₂, can be used to identify binaries caught in the so-called spin-orbit resonances. In a companion paper, we demonstrate that ϕ₁ and ϕ₂ are best measured near the merger of the two black holes. In this work, we use these spin measurements to provide the first constraints on the full six-dimensional spin distribution of merging binary black holes. In particular, we find that there is a preference for Δϕ= ϕ₁ - ϕ₂ ∼±π in the population, which can be a signature of spin-orbit resonances. We also find a preference for ϕ₁ ∼-π/4 with respect to the line of separation near merger, which has not been predicted for any astrophysical formation channel. However, the strength of these preferences depends on our prior choices, and we are unable to constrain the widths of the ϕ₁ and Δϕ distributions. Therefore, more observations are necessary to confirm the features we find. Finally, we derive constraints on the distribution of recoil kicks in the population, and use this to estimate the fraction of merger remnants retained by globular and nuclear star clusters. We make our spin and kick population constraints publicly available.
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