Publications (66)
Can Neutron-Star Mergers Explain the r-process Enrichment in Globular Clusters?
Michael Zevin, Kyle Kremer, Daniel M. Siegel +4
Star-to-star dispersion of r-process elements has been observed in a significant number of old, metal-poor globular clusters. We investigate early-time neutron-star mergers as the…
Improvements in Gravitational-Wave Sky Localization with Expanded Networks of Interferometers
Chris Pankow, Eve A. Chase, Scott Coughlin +2
A milestone of multi-messenger astronomy has been achieved with the detection of gravitational waves from a binary neutron star merger accompanied by observations of several associ…
No model-independent evidence for a peak in binary black hole spin (mis)alignments
Noah E. Wolfe, Salvatore Vitale, Michael Zevin
The degree of black-hole spin-orbit misalignment ("tilts") in the astrophysical population could be a powerful diagnostic to distinguish between binary formation in isolation, in d…
The missing link in gravitational-wave astronomy: A summary of discoveries waiting in the decihertz range
Manuel Arca Sedda, Christopher P L Berry, Karan Jani +25
Since 2015 the gravitational-wave observations of LIGO and Virgo have transformed our understanding of compact-object binaries. In the years to come, ground-based gravitational-wav…
A case for Case A: detailed look at binary black hole formation through stable mass transfer
Max M. Briel, Tassos Fragos, Monica Gallegos-Garcia +8
In isolated binary evolution, binary black hole (BBH) mergers are generally formed through stable mass transfer (SMT) or common envelope evolution. In recent years, the SMT channel…
Observational evidence for cosmological coupling of black holes and its implications for an astrophysical source of dark energy
Duncan Farrah, Kevin S. Croker, Gregory Tarlé +16
Observations have found black holes spanning ten orders of magnitude in mass across most of cosmic history. The Kerr black hole solution is however provisional as its behavior at i…
Constraining Formation Models of Binary Black Holes with Gravitational-Wave Observations
Michael Zevin, Chris Pankow, Carl L. Rodriguez +4
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 g…
COSMIC Variance in Binary Population Synthesis
Katelyn Breivik, Scott Coughlin, Michael Zevin +8
The formation and evolution of binary stars is a critical component of several fields in astronomy. The most numerous sources for gravitational wave observatories are inspiraling a…
Twin Peaks: Resolving Features in the Binary Black Hole Mass Function with COSMIC-METISSE
Duncan B. Maclean, Poojan Agrawal, Katelyn Breivik +4
Gravitational waves from inspiraling binary black holes (BBHs) provide insights into the lives and deaths of massive stars. Population synthesis allows us to model these binaries t…
Stochastic gravitational-wave background as a tool to investigate multi-channel astrophysical and primordial black-hole mergers
Simone S. Bavera, Gabriele Franciolini, Giulia Cusin +3
The formation of merging binary black holes can occur through multiple astrophysical channels such as, e.g., isolated binary evolution and dynamical formation or, alternatively, ha…
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…
Short GRB Host Galaxies. II. A Legacy Sample of Redshifts, Stellar Population Properties, and Implications for their Neutron Star Merger Origins
Anya E. Nugent, Wen-fai Fong, Yuxin Dong +14
We present the stellar population properties of 69 short gamma-ray burst (GRB) host galaxies, representing the largest uniformly-modeled sample to-date. Using the Prospector stella…
Spin Doctors: How to diagnose a hierarchical merger origin
Ethan Payne, Kyle Kremer, Michael Zevin
Gravitational-wave observations provide the unique opportunity of studying black hole formation channels and histories -- but only if we can identify their origin. One such formati…
Avoiding a Cluster Catastrophe: Retention Efficiency and the Binary Black Hole Mass Spectrum
Michael Zevin, Daniel E. Holz
The population of binary black hole mergers identified through gravitational waves has uncovered unexpected features in the intrinsic properties of black holes in the universe. One…
Approximations to the spin of close Black-hole-Wolf-Rayet binaries
Simone S. Bavera, Michael Zevin, Tassos Fragos
Population synthesis studies of binary black-hole mergers often lack robust black-hole spin estimates as they cannot accurately follow tidal spin-up during the late black-hole-Wolf…
Signatures of a subpopulation of hierarchical mergers in the GWTC-4 gravitational-wave dataset
Cailin Plunkett, Thomas Callister, Michael Zevin +1
Repeated black-hole mergers in dense stellar clusters are a plausible mechanism to populate the predicted gap in black hole masses due to the pair-instability supernova process. Th…
Modeling Dense Star Clusters in the Milky Way and Beyond with the Cluster Monte Carlo Code
Carl L. Rodriguez, Newlin C. Weatherford, Scott C. Coughlin +10
We describe the public release of the Cluster Monte Carlo Code (CMC) a parallel, star-by-star -body code for modeling dense star clusters. CMC treats collisional stellar dynamic…
Hierarchical Triples vs. Globular Clusters: Binary black hole merger eccentricity distributions compete and evolve with redshift
Andris Dorozsmai, Isobel M. Romero-Shaw, Aditya Vijaykumar +5
The formation mechanisms of merging binary black holes (BBHs) observed by the LIGO-Virgo-KAGRA collaboration remain uncertain. Detectable eccentricity provides a powerful diagnosti…
One Channel to Rule Them All? Constraining the Origins of Binary Black Holes using Multiple Formation Pathways
Michael Zevin, Simone S. Bavera, Christopher P. L. Berry +7
The second LIGO-Virgo catalog of gravitational wave transients has more than quadrupled the observational sample of binary black holes. We analyze this catalog using a suite of fiv…
Discriminative Dimensionality Reduction using Deep Neural Networks for Clustering of LIGO Data
Sara Bahaadini, Yunan Wu, Scott Coughlin +2
In this paper, leveraging the capabilities of neural networks for modeling the non-linearities that exist in the data, we propose several models that can project data into a low di…
POSYDON Version 2: Population Synthesis with Detailed Binary-Evolution Simulations across a Cosmological Range of Metallicities
Jeff J. Andrews, Simone S. Bavera, Max Briel +21
Whether considering rare astrophysical events on cosmological scales or unresolved stellar populations, accurate models must account for the integrated contribution from the entire…
The impact of mass-transfer physics on the observable properties of field binary black hole populations
Simone S. Bavera, Tassos Fragos, Michael Zevin +13
We study the impact of mass-transfer physics on the observable properties of binary black hole populations formed through isolated binary evolution. We investigate the impact of ma…
Illuminating Black Hole Binary Formation Channels with Spins in Advanced LIGO
Carl L. Rodriguez, Michael Zevin, Chris Pankow +2
The recent detections of the binary black hole mergers GW150914 and GW151226 have inaugurated the field of gravitational-wave astronomy. For the two main formation channels that ha…
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…
Astrophysical Implications of Eccentricity in Gravitational Waves from Neutron Star-Black Hole Binaries
Isobel Romero-Shaw, Jakob Stegmann, Gonzalo Morras +2
The gravitational-wave signal from the neutron star-black hole (NSBH) merger GW200105 is consistent with this binary having significant orbital eccentricity close to merger. This r…
Gravity Spy: Integrating Advanced LIGO Detector Characterization, Machine Learning, and Citizen Science
Michael Zevin, Scott Coughlin, Sara Bahaadini +15
(abridged for arXiv) With the first direct detection of gravitational waves, the Advanced Laser Interferometer Gravitational-wave Observatory (LIGO) has initiated a new field of as…
Advancing Glitch Classification in Gravity Spy: Multi-view Fusion with Attention-based Machine Learning for Advanced LIGO's Fourth Observing Run
Yunan Wu, Michael Zevin, Christopher P. L. Berry +7
The first successful detection of gravitational waves by ground-based observatories, such as the Laser Interferometer Gravitational-Wave Observatory (LIGO), marked a breakthrough i…
Consistent eccentricities for gravitational wave astronomy: Resolving discrepancies between astrophysical simulations and waveform models
Aditya Vijaykumar, Alexandra G. Hanselman, Michael Zevin
Detecting imprints of orbital eccentricity in GW signals promises to shed light on the formation mechanisms of binary black holes. To constrain formation mechanisms, distributions…
Implications of Eccentric Observations on Binary Black Hole Formation Channels
Michael Zevin, Isobel M. Romero-Shaw, Kyle Kremer +2
Orbital eccentricity is one of the most robust discriminators for distinguishing between dynamical and isolated formation scenarios of binary black hole mergers using gravitational…
What is the nature of GW230529? An exploration of the gravitational lensing hypothesis
Justin Janquart, David Keitel, Rico K. L. Lo +26
On the 29th of May 2023, the LIGO-Virgo-KAGRA Collaboration observed a compact binary coalescence event consistent with a neutron star-black hole merger, though the heavier object…
Deep Multi-view Models for Glitch Classification
Sara Bahaadini, Neda Rohani, Scott Coughlin +3
Non-cosmic, non-Gaussian disturbances known as "glitches", show up in gravitational-wave data of the Advanced Laser Interferometer Gravitational-wave Observatory, or aLIGO. In this…
POSYDON: A General-Purpose Population Synthesis Code with Detailed Binary-Evolution Simulations
Tassos Fragos, Jeff J. Andrews, Simone S. Bavera +22
Most massive stars are members of a binary or a higher-order stellar systems, where the presence of a binary companion can decisively alter their evolution via binary interactions.…
Black Hole Mergers from Hierarchical Triples in Dense Star Clusters
Miguel A. S. Martinez, Giacomo Fragione, Kyle Kremer +8
Hierarchical triples are expected to be produced by the frequent binary-mediated interactions in the cores of globular clusters. In some of these triples, the tertiary companion ca…
Black Holes: The Next Generation -- Repeated Mergers in Dense Star Clusters and their Gravitational-Wave Properties
Carl L. Rodriguez, Michael Zevin, Pau Amaro-Seoane +4
When two black holes merge in a dense star cluster, they form a new black hole with a well-defined mass and spin. If that "second-generation" black hole remains in the cluster, it…
Eccentric Black Hole Mergers in Dense Star Clusters: The Role of Binary-Binary Encounters
Michael Zevin, Johan Samsing, Carl Rodriguez +2
We present the first systematic study of strong binary-single and binary-binary black hole interactions with the inclusion of general relativity. When including general relativisti…
A Preferential Growth Channel for Supermassive Black Holes in Elliptical Galaxies at z<2
Duncan Farrah, Sara Petty, Kevin Croker +12
The assembly of stellar and supermassive black hole (SMBH) mass in elliptical galaxies since can help to diagnose the origins of locally-observed correlations between SMBH…
On the Astrophysical Origin of Binary Black Hole Subpopulations: A Tale of Three Channels?
Anarya Ray, Shirsha Mukherjee, Michael Zevin +1
There is increasing evidence for multiple binary black hole~(BBH) subpopulations in the cumulative gravitational wave catalog by the LIGO-Virgo-KAGRA Collaboration. The astrophysic…
High-mass binary black hole mergers from detailed binary evolution models
Max M. Briel, Olcay Bıyıklı, Tassos Fragos +10
The paper uses detailed binary evolution simulations to test whether super‑Eddington mass transfer in isolated binaries can produce the observed high‑mass binary black hole mergers…
You Can't Always Get What You Want: The Impact of Prior Assumptions on Interpreting GW190412
Michael Zevin, Christopher P. L. Berry, Scott Coughlin +2
GW190412 is the first observation of a black hole binary with definitively unequal masses. GW190412's mass asymmetry, along with the measured positive effective inspiral spin, allo…
Gravity Spy: Lessons Learned and a Path Forward
Michael Zevin, Corey B. Jackson, Zoheyr Doctor +23
The Gravity Spy project aims to uncover the origins of glitches, transient bursts of noise that hamper analysis of gravitational-wave data. By using both the work of citizen-scienc…
Large Gravitational Wave Phase Shifts from Strong 3-body Interactions in Dense Stellar Clusters
Kai Hendriks, Dany Atallah, Miguel Martinez +7
The phase evolution of gravitational waves (GWs) can be modulated by the astrophysical environment surrounding the source, which provides a probe for the origin of individual binar…
Post-Newtonian Dynamics in Dense Star Clusters: Formation, Masses, and Merger Rates of Highly-Eccentric Black Hole Binaries
Carl L. Rodriguez, Pau Amaro-Seoane, Sourav Chatterjee +5
Using state-of-the-art dynamical simulations of globular clusters, including radiation reaction during black hole encounters and a cosmological model of star cluster formation, we…
Probing the progenitors of spinning binary black-hole mergers with long gamma-ray bursts
Simone S. Bavera, Tassos Fragos, Emmanouil Zapartas +15
Long-duration gamma-ray bursts are thought to be associated with the core-collapse of massive, rapidly spinning stars and the formation of black holes. However, efficient angular m…
Forward Modeling of Double Neutron Stars: Insights from Highly-Offset Short Gamma-Ray Bursts
Michael Zevin, Luke Zoltan Kelley, Anya Nugent +3
We present a detailed analysis of two well-localized, highly offset short gamma-ray bursts---GRB~070809 and GRB~090515---investigating the kinematic evolution of their progenitors…
Astrophysical Prior Information and Gravitational-wave Parameter Estimation
Chris Pankow, Laura Sampson, Leah Perri +4
The detection of electromagnetic counterparts to gravitational waves has great promise for the investigation of many scientific questions. It has long been hoped that in addition t…
Red vs. Blue: How metallicity shapes black hole dynamics and mergers in dense star clusters
Saloni Agrawal, Kyle Kremer, Michael Zevin +6
Dense star clusters are a well-established environment for the formation of gravitational wave sources through dynamical interactions. Recent LIGO-Virgo-KAGRA (LVK) events such as…
Exploring the astrophysical origins of binary black holes using normalising flows
Storm Colloms, Christopher P L Berry, John Veitch +1
The growing number of gravitational-wave detections from binary black holes enables increasingly precise measurements of their population properties. The observed population is mos…
Tests of General Relativity with GW230529: a neutron star merging with a lower mass-gap compact object
Elise M. Sänger, Soumen Roy, Michalis Agathos +16
On May 29, 2023, the LIGO Livingston observatory detected the gravitational-wave signal GW230529_181500 from the merger of a neutron star with a lower mass-gap compact object. Its…
Intermediate-mass Black Holes on the Run from Young Star Clusters
Elena González Prieto, Kyle Kremer, Giacomo Fragione +4
The existence of black holes (BHs) with masses in the range between stellar remnants and supermassive BHs has only recently become unambiguously established. GW190521, a gravitatio…
Post-Newtonian Dynamics in Dense Star Clusters: Binary Black Holes in the LISA Band
Kyle Kremer, Carl L. Rodriguez, Pau Amaro-Seoane +8
The dynamical processing of black holes in the dense cores of globular clusters (GCs), makes them efficient factories for producing binary black holes (BBHs). Here we explore the p…
No need to know: astrophysics-free gravitational-wave cosmology
Amanda M. Farah, Thomas A. Callister, Jose MarÃa Ezquiaga +2
Gravitational waves (GWs) from merging compact objects encode direct information about the luminosity distance to the binary. When paired with a redshift measurement, this enables…
Inferring Interference: Identifying a Perturbing Tertiary with Eccentric Gravitational Wave Burst Timing
Isobel M. Romero-Shaw, Nicholas Loutrel, Michael Zevin
[Abridged] Binary black holes may form and merge dynamically. These binaries are likely to become bound with high eccentricities, resulting in a burst of gravitational radiation at…
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…
A Population of Short-duration Gamma-ray Bursts with Dwarf Host Galaxies
Anya E. Nugent, Wen-fai Fong, Cristian Castrejon +3
We present a population of 11 of the faintest ( AB mag) short gamma-ray burst (GRB) host galaxies. We model their sparse available observations using the stellar population…
Characterizing Compact-object Binaries in the Lower Mass Gap with Gravitational Waves
Jessica Cotturone, Michael Zevin, Sylvia Biscoveanu
The source binary of the gravitational-wave (GW) event GW230529, detected at the beginning of the fourth LIGO-Virgo-KAGRA observing run, was inferred to consist of a NS and a compa…
Exploring the evolution of gravitational-wave emitters with efficient emulation: Constraining the origins of binary black holes using normalising flows
Storm Colloms, Christopher P L Berry, John Veitch +1
Binary population synthesis simulations allow detailed modelling of gravitational-wave sources from a variety of formation channels. These population models can be compared to the…
Exploring the Lower Mass Gap and Unequal Mass Regime in Compact Binary Evolution
Michael Zevin, Mario Spera, Christopher P. L. Berry +1
On August 14, 2019, the LIGO and Virgo detectors observed GW190814, a gravitational-wave signal originating from the merger of a black hole with a $\simeq 2.6 M…
The Missing Link Between Black Holes in High-Mass X-ray Binaries and Gravitational-Wave Sources: Observational Selection Effects
Camille Liotine, Michael Zevin, Christopher Berry +2
There are few observed high-mass X-ray binaries (HMXBs) that harbor massive black holes, and none are likely to result in a binary black hole (BBH) that merges within a Hubble time…
Evidence for hierarchical black hole mergers in the second LIGO--Virgo gravitational-wave catalog
Chase Kimball, Colm Talbot, Christopher P. L. Berry +10
We study the population properties of merging binary black holes in the second LIGO--Virgo Gravitational-Wave Transient Catalog assuming they were all formed dynamically in gravita…
DIRECT: Deep Discriminative Embedding for Clustering of LIGO Data
Sara Bahaadini, Vahid Noroozi, Neda Rohani +3
In this paper, benefiting from the strong ability of deep neural network in estimating non-linear functions, we propose a discriminative embedding function to be used as a feature…
Black hole genealogy: Identifying hierarchical mergers with gravitational waves
Chase Kimball, Colm Talbot, Christopher P. L. Berry +4
In dense stellar environments, the merger products of binary black hole mergers may undergo additional mergers. These hierarchical mergers are predicted to have higher masses than…
Suspicious Siblings: The Distribution of Mass and Spin Across Component Black Holes in Isolated Binary Evolution
Michael Zevin, Simone S. Bavera
The LIGO and Virgo gravitational-wave detectors have uncovered binary black hole systems with definitively nonzero spins, as well as systems with significant spin residing in the m…
Incorporating Current Research into Formal Higher Education Settings using Astrobites
Nathan Sanders, Susanna Kohler, Chris Faesi +3
A primary goal of many undergraduate- and graduate-level courses in the physical sciences is to prepare students to engage in scientific research, or to prepare students for career…
What You Don't Know Can Hurt You: Use and Abuse of Astrophysical Models in Gravitational-wave Population Analyses
April Qiu Cheng, Michael Zevin, Salvatore Vitale
One of the goals of gravitational-wave astrophysics is to infer the number and properties of the formation channels of binary black holes (BBHs); to do so, one must be able to conn…
Observational Inference on the Delay Time Distribution of Short Gamma-ray Bursts
Michael Zevin, Anya E. Nugent, Susmita Adhikari +3
The delay time distribution of neutron star mergers provides critical insights into binary evolution processes and the merger rate evolution of compact object binaries. However, cu…
The Missing Link in Gravitational-Wave Astronomy: Discoveries waiting in the decihertz range
Manuel Arca Sedda, Christopher P. L. Berry, Karan Jani +27
The gravitational-wave astronomical revolution began in 2015 with LIGO's observation of the coalescence of two stellar-mass black holes. Over the coming decades, ground-based detec…