Merging stellar-mass binary black holes

Abstract

The LIGO and Virgo detectors have directly observed gravitational waves from mergers of pairs of stellar-mass black holes, along with a smaller number of mergers involving neutron stars. These observations raise the hope that compact object mergers could be used as a probe of stellar and binary evolution, and perhaps of stellar dynamics. This colloquium-style article summarises the existing observations, describes theoretical predictions for formation channels of merging stellar-mass black-hole binaries along with their rates and observable properties, and presents some prospects for gravitational-wave astronomy.

Version accepted by Physics Reports

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Cited by in corpus (47)

• The effect of the metallicity-specific star formation history on double compact object mergers
• Rates of Compact Object Coalescences
• The cosmic merger rate density of compact objects: impact of star formation, metallicity, initial mass function and binary evolution
• Searching for a subpopulation of primordial black holes in LIGO/Virgo gravitational-wave data
• The impact of pair-instability mass loss on the binary black hole mass distribution
• The redshift evolution of the binary black hole merger rate: a weighty matter
• Constraining the masses of microlensing black holes and the mass gap with Gaia DR2
• Compact object mergers: exploring uncertainties from stellar and binary evolution with SEVN
• A new channel to form IMBHs throughout cosmic time
• Eccentricity or spin precession? Distinguishing subdominant effects in gravitational-wave data
• No peaks without valleys: The stable mass transfer channel for gravitational-wave sources in light of the neutron star-black hole mass gap
• Discriminating between Neutron Stars and Black Holes with Imperfect Knowledge of the Maximum Neutron Star Mass
• Suspicious Siblings: The Distribution of Mass and Spin Across Component Black Holes in Isolated Binary Evolution
• No evidence that the majority of black holes in binaries have zero spin
• Modelling Double Neutron Stars: Radio and Gravitational Waves
• State of the field: Binary black hole natal kicks and prospects for isolated field formation after GWTC-2
• Deep learning and Bayesian inference of gravitational-wave populations: Hierarchical black-hole mergers
• Resolving The Peak Of The Black Hole Mass Spectrum
• Signatures of mass ratio reversal in gravitational waves from merging binary black holes
• Searching for mass-spin correlations in the population of gravitational-wave events: the GWTC-3 case study
• Common Envelope Wind Tunnel: The Effects of Binary Mass Ratio and Implications for the Accretion-Driven Growth of LIGO Binary Black Holes
• STROOPWAFEL: Simulating rare outcomes from astrophysical populations, with application to gravitational-wave sources
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• Primordial black hole mergers from three-body interactions
• Tossing Black Hole Spin Axes
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• Dropping Anchor: Understanding the Populations of Binary Black Holes with Random and Aligned Spin Orientations
• The Missing Link Between Black Holes in High-Mass X-ray Binaries and Gravitational-Wave Sources: Observational Selection Effects
• Gravitational-wave inference for eccentric binaries: the argument of periapsis
• Establishing the Non-Primordial Origin of Black Hole-Neutron Star Mergers
• Delimiting the black hole mass in the X-ray transient MAXI J1659-152 with H$\alpha$ spectroscopy
• Divergence in mass ratio distributions between low-mass and high-mass coalescing binary black holes
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• Accretion-modified stellar-mass black hole distribution and milli-Hz gravitational wave backgrounds from galaxy centre
• The Merger Rate of Primordial Black Hole-Neutron Star Binaries in Ellipsoidal-Collapse Dark Matter Halo Models
• The Bardeen-Petterson effect, disk breaking, and the spin orientations of supermassive black-hole binaries
• New insights on binary black hole formation channels after GWTC-2: young star clusters versus isolated binaries
• Searching for candidates of coalescing binary black holes formed through chemically homogeneous evolution in GWTC-3
• Gravitational-wave event rates as a new probe for dark matter microphysics
• Detection of single-degenerate massive binaries with Gaia: The impact of blue supergiants, triples, mass precision, and high-precision parallax requirements
• Distinguishing binary black hole precessional morphologies with gravitational wave observations
• Hierarchical triple mergers: testing Hawking's area theorem with the inspiral signals
• Gravitational Waves from Black Holes in Merging Ultra-Dwarf Galaxies
• Stellar response after stripping as a model for common-envelope outcomes
• Detectability of neutron star -- white dwarf coalescences by eROSITA and ART-XC
• Which black hole formed first? Mass-ratio reversal in massive binary stars from gravitational-wave data
• Unstable binary black-hole spins: post-Newtonian theory and numerical relativity