Publications (64)
Multi-messenger constraints on LIGO/Virgo/KAGRA gravitational wave binary black holes merging in AGN disks
Tomás Cabrera, Antonella Palmese, Maya Fishbach
While the LIGO/Virgo/KAGRA (LVK) gravitational wave (GW) detectors have detected over 300 binary black hole (BBH) mergers to date, the first confirmation of an electromagnetic (EM)…
The Mass Density of Merging Binary Black Holes Over Cosmic Time
Aryanna Schiebelbein-Zwack, Maya Fishbach
The connection between the binary black hole (BBH) mergers observed by LIGO-Virgo-KAGRA (LVK) and their stellar progenitors remains uncertain. Specifically, the fraction of st…
Standard sirens with a running Planck mass
Macarena Lagos, Maya Fishbach, Philippe Landry +1
We consider the effect of a time-varying Planck mass on the propagation of gravitational waves (GWs). A running Planck mass arises naturally in several modified gravity theories, a…
Evidence of the pair instability gap from black hole masses
Hui Tong, Maya Fishbach, Eric Thrane +13
Stellar theory predicts a forbidden range of black-hole masses between -- due to pair-instability supernovae, but evidence for such a gap in the mass distri…
Gravitational-wave kicks impact spins of black holes from hierarchical mergers
Angela Borchers, Claire S. Ye, Maya Fishbach
One proposed black hole formation channel involves hierarchical mergers, where black holes form through repeated binary mergers. Previous studies have shown that such black holes f…
Cosmology with Standard Sirens at Cosmic Noon
Christine Ye, Maya Fishbach
Gravitational waves (GWs) directly measure the luminosity distance to the merger, which, when combined with an independent measurement of the source's redshift, provides a novel pr…
Where are LIGO's Big Black Holes?
Maya Fishbach, Daniel E. Holz
In LIGO's O1 and O2 observational runs, the detectors were sensitive to stellar mass binary black hole coalescences with component masses up to , with binaries with p…
Gravitational lensing rarely produces high-mass outliers to the compact binary population
Amanda M. Farah, Jose MarÃa Ezquiaga, Maya Fishbach +1
All gravitational-wave signals are inevitably gravitationally lensed by intervening matter as they propagate through the Universe. When a gravitational-wave signal is magnified, it…
Bridging the Gap: Categorizing Gravitational-Wave Events at the Transition Between Neutron Stars and Black Holes
Amanda M. Farah, Maya Fishbach, Reed Essick +2
We search for features in the mass distribution of detected compact binary coalescences which signify the transition between neutron stars and black holes. We analyze all gravitati…
Compact Binary Coalescence Sensitivity Estimates with Injection Campaigns during the LIGO-Virgo-KAGRA Collaborations' Fourth Observing Run
Reed Essick, Michael W. Coughlin, Michael Zevin +21
We describe the effort to characterize gravitational-wave searches and detector sensitivity to different types of compact binary coalescences during the LIGO-Virgo-KAGRA Collaborat…
Does the Black Hole Merger Rate Evolve with Redshift?
Maya Fishbach, Daniel E. Holz, Will M. Farr
We explore the ability of gravitational-wave detectors to extract the redshift distribution of binary black hole (BBH) mergers. The evolution of the merger rate across redshifts $0…
Mass Distribution of Binary Black Hole Mergers from Young and Old Dense Star Clusters
Claire S. Ye, Maya Fishbach, Kyle Kremer +1
Dense star clusters are thought to contribute significantly to the merger rates of stellar-mass binary black holes (BBHs) detected by the LIGO-Virgo-KAGRA collaboration. We combine…
Inferring the neutron star maximum mass and lower mass gap in neutron star-black hole systems with spin
Christine Ye, Maya Fishbach
Gravitational-wave (GW) detections of merging neutron star-black hole (NSBH) systems probe astrophysical neutron star (NS) and black hole (BH) mass distributions, especially at the…
Limits on the number of spacetime dimensions from GW170817
Kris Pardo, Maya Fishbach, Daniel E. Holz +1
The observation of GW170817 in both gravitational and electromagnetic waves provides a number of unique tests of general relativity. One question we can answer with this event is:…
Limits on hierarchical black hole mergers from the most negative systems
Maya Fishbach, Chase Kimball, Vicky Kalogera
It has been proposed that some black holes (BHs) in binary black hole (BBH) systems are born from "hierarchical mergers" (HM); i.e. earlier mergers of smaller BHs. These HM product…
Shouts and Murmurs: Combining Individual Gravitational-Wave Sources with the Stochastic Background to Measure the History of Binary Black Hole Mergers
Thomas Callister, Maya Fishbach, Daniel Holz +1
One of the goals of gravitational-wave astronomy is to quantify the evolution of the compact binary merger rate with redshift. The redshift distribution of black hole mergers would…
Picky Partners: The Pairing of Component Masses in Binary Black Hole Mergers
Maya Fishbach, Daniel E. Holz
We examine the relationship between individual black hole (BH) masses in merging binary black hole (BBH) systems. Analyzing the ten BBH detections from LIGO/Virgo's first two obser…
Counting on Short Gamma-Ray Bursts: Gravitational-Wave Constraints of Jet Geometry
Amanda Farah, Reed Essick, Zoheyr Doctor +2
The detection of GW170817 in gravitational waves and gamma rays revealed that short gamma-ray bursts are associated with the merger of neutron-stars. Gamma rays are thought to resu…
The maximum mass ratio of hierarchical binary black hole mergers may cause the - correlation
Aditya Vijaykumar, Amanda M. Farah, Maya Fishbach
Regardless of their initial spins, the merger of two roughly equal mass black holes (BHs) produces a remnant BH of dimensionless spin . Such remnants can merge with other BHs…
Minding the gap: GW190521 as a straddling binary
Maya Fishbach, Daniel E. Holz
Models for black hole (BH) formation from stellar evolution robustly predict the existence of a pair-instability supernova (PISN) mass gap in the range to solar…
A Future Percent-Level Measurement of the Hubble Expansion at Redshift 0.8 With Advanced LIGO
Will M. Farr, Maya Fishbach, Jiani Ye +1
Simultaneous measurements of distance and redshift can be used to constrain the expansion history of the universe and associated cosmological parameters. Merging binary black hole…
How Low Can You Go: Constraining the Effects of Catalog Incompleteness on Dark Siren Cosmology
Madison VanWyngarden, Maya Fishbach, Aditya Vijaykumar +2
Gravitational waves (GWs) serve as standard sirens by directly encoding the luminosity distance to their source. When the host galaxy redshift is known, for example, through observ…
Probing Extremal Gravitational-Wave Events with Coarse-Grained Likelihoods
Reed Essick, Amanda Farah, Shanika Galaudage +4
As catalogs of gravitational-wave transients grow, new records are set for the most extreme systems observed to date. The most massive observed black holes probe the physics of pai…
Things that might go bump in the night: Assessing structure in the binary black hole mass spectrum
Amanda M. Farah, Bruce Edelman, Michael Zevin +4
Several features in the mass spectrum of merging binary black holes (BBHs) have been identified using data from the Third Gravitational Wave Transient Catalog (GWTC-3). These featu…
DAGnabbit! Ensuring Consistency between Noise and Detection in Hierarchical Bayesian Inference
Reed Essick, Maya Fishbach
Hierarchical Bayesian inference can simultaneously account for both measurement uncertainty and selection effects within astronomical catalogs. In particular, the hierarchy imposed…
SOAR/Goodman Spectroscopic Assessment of Candidate Counterparts of the LIGO-Virgo Event GW190814
Douglas Tucker, Matthew Wiesner, Sahar Allam +140
On 2019 August 14 at 21:10:39 UTC, the LIGO/Virgo Collaboration (LVC) detected a possible neutron star-black hole merger (NSBH), the first ever identified. An extensive search for…
The Redshift Evolution of the Binary Black Hole Mass Distribution from Dense Star Clusters
Claire S. Ye, Maya Fishbach
Gravitational-wave detectors are unveiling a population of binary black hole (BBH) mergers out to redshifts , and are starting to constrain how the BBH population evol…
Probing cosmic chemical enrichment with next-generation gravitational-wave observatories
Maya Fishbach
By observing binary black hole (BBH) mergers out to the edge of the Universe, next-generation (XG) ground-based gravitational-wave (GW) detectors like Cosmic Explorer and Einstein…
Surprisingly Similar: The Mass Function of Gaia Neutron Stars and First-Born Double Neutron Stars
Aryanna Schiebelbein-Zwack, L. A. C van Son, Maya Fishbach +1
The mass distribution of neutron stars encodes information about their formation and binary evolution. We compare the masses of two distinct populations: I) the recently identified…
The binary-host connection: astrophysics of gravitational wave binaries from their host galaxy properties
Susmita Adhikari, Maya Fishbach, Daniel E. Holz +2
Gravitational waves produced from the merger of binary neutron stars (BNSs) are accompanied by electromagnetic counterparts, making it possible to identify the associated host gala…
Regression on Regression: Mapping Data-Driven Binary Black Hole Merger Rate Fits to Progenitor Histories
Emma Blanchet, Aryanna Schiebelbein-Zwack, Maya Fishbach
The binary black hole (BBH) merger rate is governed by the progenitor formation rate and the distribution of delay-times between formation and merger, but these functions remain po…
Do high-spin high-mass X-ray binaries contribute to the population of merging binary black holes?
Monica Gallegos-Garcia, Maya Fishbach, Vicky Kalogera +2
Gravitational-wave observations of binary black hole (BBH) systems point to black hole spin magnitudes being relatively low. These measurements appear in tension with high spin mea…
Does Matter Matter? Using the mass distribution to distinguish neutron stars and black holes
Maya Fishbach, Reed Essick, Daniel E. Holz
Gravitational-wave detectors have opened a new window through which we can observe black holes (BHs) and neutron stars (NSs). Analyzing the 11 detections from LIGO/Virgo's first gr…
The role of natal kicks in forming asymmetric compact binary mergers
Madeline Oh, Maya Fishbach, Chase Kimball +2
In their most recent observing run, the LIGO-Virgo-KAGRA (LVK) Collaboration observed gravitational waves (GWs) from compact binary mergers with highly asymmetric mass ratios, incl…
Forbidden Formation Histories: The Binary Black Hole Merger Rate Disfavors Long Delay Times
Aryanna Schiebelbein-Zwack, Maya Fishbach
The redshift evolution of the binary black hole (BBH) merger rate can be expressed as the convolution of the progenitor formation rate with the distribution of time delays between…
Predicting the rate of fast radio bursts in globular clusters from binary black hole observations
Aryamann Rao, Claire S. Ye, Maya Fishbach
The repeating fast radio burst (FRB) source in an old globular cluster (GC) in M81 proves that FRBs, which are typically associated with young magnetars, can also occur in old stel…
Spinning spectral sirens: Robust cosmological measurement using mass-spin correlations in the binary black hole population
Hui Tong, Maya Fishbach, Eric Thrane
Gravitational waves from compact binary mergers provide a direct measurement of luminosity distance, which, in combination with redshift information, serves as a cosmological probe…
Apples and Oranges: Comparing black holes in X-ray binaries and gravitational-wave sources
Maya Fishbach, Vicky Kalogera
The component black holes (BHs) observed in gravitational-wave (GW) binary black hole (BBH) events tend to be more massive and slower spinning than those observed in black hole X-r…
Two of a Kind: Comparing big and small black holes in binaries with gravitational waves
Amanda M. Farah, Maya Fishbach, Daniel E. Holz
When modeling the population of merging binary black holes, analyses have generally focused on characterizing the distribution of primary (i.e. more massive) black holes in the bin…
Roman CCS White Paper: Characterizing the Galactic population of isolated black holes
Casey Y. Lam, Natasha Abrams, Jeff Andrews +34
Although there are estimated to be 100 million isolated black holes (BHs) in the Milky Way, only one has been found so far, resulting in significant uncertainty about their propert…
The correlation of field binary black hole mergers and how 3G gravitational-wave detectors can constrain it
Simone S. Bavera, Maya Fishbach, Michael Zevin +2
Understanding the origin of merging binary black holes is currently one of the most pressing quests in astrophysics. We show that if isolated binary evolution dominates the formati…
The time delay distribution and formation metallicity of LIGO-Virgo's binary black holes
Maya Fishbach, Vicky Kalogera
We derive the first constraints on the time delay distribution of binary black hole (BBH) mergers using the LIGO-Virgo Gravitational-Wave Transient Catalog GWTC-2. Assuming that th…
Transdimensional inference for gravitational-wave astronomy with Bilby
Hui Tong, Nir Guttman, Teagan A. Clarke +8
It has become increasingly useful to answer questions in gravitational-wave astronomy using transdimensional models where the number of free parameters can be varied depending on t…
Unveiling the Universe with Emerging Cosmological Probes
Michele Moresco, Lorenzo Amati, Luca Amendola +22
The detection of the accelerated expansion of the Universe has been one of the major breakthroughs in modern cosmology. Several cosmological probes (CMB, SNe Ia, BAO) have been stu…
Are LIGO's Black Holes Made From Smaller Black Holes?
Maya Fishbach, Daniel E. Holz, Ben Farr
One proposed formation channel for stellar mass black holes (BHs) is through hierarchical mergers of smaller BHs. Repeated mergers between comparable mass BHs leave an imprint on t…
The Hitchhiker's guide to the galaxy catalog approach for gravitational wave cosmology
Jonathan R. Gair, Archisman Ghosh, Rachel Gray +28
We outline the ``dark siren'' galaxy catalog method for cosmological inference using gravitational wave (GW) standard sirens, clarifying some common misconceptions in the implement…
An Isotropy Measurement with Gravitational Wave Observations
Reed Essick, Will M. Farr, Maya Fishbach +2
We constrain the distribution of merging compact binaries across the celestial sphere using the GWTC-3 catalog from the LIGO-Virgo-KAGRA Collaborations' (LVK) third observing run.…
Globular cluster formation histories, masses and radii inferred from gravitational waves
Maya Fishbach, Giacomo Fragione
Globular clusters (GCs) are found in all types of galaxies and harbor some of the most extreme stellar systems, including black holes that may dynamically assemble into merging bin…
Enabling real-time multi-messenger astrophysics discoveries with deep learning
E. A. Huerta, Gabrielle Allen, Igor Andreoni +57
Multi-messenger astrophysics is a fast-growing, interdisciplinary field that combines data, which vary in volume and speed of data processing, from many different instruments that…
Is GW231123 a hierarchical merger?
Lachlan Passenger, Sharan Banagiri, Eric Thrane +4
The binary black hole merger GW231123 is both the most massive gravitational-wave event observed and has the highest component spins measured to date. The dimensionless spins of th…
LIGO-Virgo-KAGRA's Oldest Black Holes: Probing star formation at cosmic noon with GWTC-3
Maya Fishbach, Lieke van Son
In their third observing run, the LIGO-Virgo-KAGRA gravitational-wave (GW) observatory was sensitive to binary black hole (BBH) mergers out to redshifts .…
Hierarchical mergers of stellar-mass black holes and their gravitational-wave signatures
Davide Gerosa, Maya Fishbach
We review theoretical findings, astrophysical modeling, and current gravitational-wave evidence of hierarchical stellar-mass black-hole mergers. While most of the compact binary me…
A subpopulation of low-mass, spinning black holes: signatures of dynamical assembly
Hui Tong, Thomas A. Callister, Maya Fishbach +5
Gravitational-wave observations of massive, rapidly spinning binary black holes mergers provide increasing evidence for the dynamical origin of some mergers. Previous studies have…
Cosmological Inference using Gravitational Wave Standard Sirens: A Mock Data Challenge
Rachel Gray, Ignacio Magaña Hernandez, Hong Qi +12
The observation of binary neutron star merger GW170817, along with its optical counterpart, provided the first constraint on the Hubble constant using gravitational wave stan…
The steep redshift evolution of the hierarchical binary black hole merger rate may cause the - correlation
Amanda M. Farah, Aditya Vijaykumar, Maya Fishbach
There is growing evidence from gravitational-wave observations that some merging black holes are created from previous mergers. Using the prediction that these hierarchically merge…
A 2 per cent Hubble constant measurement from standard sirens within 5 years
Hsin-Yu Chen, Maya Fishbach, Daniel E. Holz
Gravitational wave coalescence events provide an entirely new way to determine the Hubble constant, with the absolute distance calibration provided by the theory of general relativ…
Gravitational-wave dark siren cosmology systematics from galaxy weighting
Alexandra G. Hanselman, Aditya Vijaykumar, Maya Fishbach +1
The detection of GW170817 and the measurement of its redshift from the associated electromagnetic counterpart provided the first gravitational wave determination of the Hubble cons…
Do LIGO/Virgo black hole mergers produce AGN flares? The case of GW190521 and prospects for reaching a confident association
Antonella Palmese, Maya Fishbach, Colin J. Burke +2
The recent report of an association of the gravitational-wave (GW) binary black hole (BBH) merger GW190521 with a flare in the Active Galactic Nuclei (AGN) J124942.3+344929 has gen…
When are LIGO/Virgo's Big Black-Hole Mergers?
Maya Fishbach, Zoheyr Doctor, Thomas Callister +6
We study the evolution of the binary black hole (BBH) mass distribution across cosmic time. The second gravitational-wave transient catalog (GWTC-2) from LIGO/Virgo contains BBH ev…
Inferring host-galaxy properties of LIGO-Virgo-KAGRA's black holes
Aditya Vijaykumar, Maya Fishbach, Susmita Adhikari +1
Observations of gravitational waves from binary black hole (BBH) mergers have measured the redshift evolution of the BBH merger rate. The number density of galaxies in the Universe…
Constraints from gravitational wave detections of binary black hole mergers on the rate
Robert Farmer, Mathieu Renzo, Selma de Mink +2
Gravitational wave detections are starting to allow us to probe the physical processes in the evolution of very massive stars through the imprints they leave on their final remnant…
Are long gamma-ray bursts progenitors to merging binary black holes?
Tom Y. Wu, Maya Fishbach
The distribution of delay times between the formation of binary black hole (BBH) progenitors and their gravitational-wave (GW) merger provides important clues about their unknown f…
Implications of low neutron star merger rates for gamma-ray bursts, r-process production and Galactic double neutron stars
Maya Fishbach, Alexander P. Ji, Wen-fai Fong +4
The first multimessenger discovery of a binary neutron star (BNS) merger, GW170817, proved that such mergers can source short gamma-ray bursts (SGRBs) and produce r-process element…
The Most Massive Binary Black Hole Detections and the Identification of Population Outliers
Maya Fishbach, Will M. Farr, Daniel E. Holz
Advanced LIGO and Virgo detected ten binary black holes (BBHs) in their first two observing runs (O1 and O2). Analysis of these events found strong evidence for a dearth of BBHs wi…