Looking for the parents of LIGO's black holes

Abstract

Solutions to the two-body problem in general relativity allow us to predict the mass, spin and recoil velocity of a black-hole merger remnant given the masses and spins of its binary progenitors. In this paper we address the inverse problem: given a binary black-hole merger, can we use the parameters measured by gravitational-wave interferometers to tell if the binary components are of hierarchical origin, i.e. if they are themselves remnants of previous mergers? If so, can we determine at least some of the properties of their parents? This inverse problem is in general overdetermined. We show that hierarchical mergers occupy a characteristic region in the plane composed of the effective spin parameters ${\chi }_{\mathrm{eff}}$ and ${\chi }_{\mathrm{p}}$, and therefore a measurement of these parameters can add weight to the hierarchical-merger interpretation of some gravitational-wave events, including GW190521. If one of the binary components has hierarchical origin and its spin magnitude is well measured, we derive exclusion regions on the properties of its parents: for example we infer that the parents of GW190412 (if hierarchical) must have had unequal masses and low spins. Our formalism is quite general, and it can be used to infer constraints on the astrophysical environment producing hierarchical mergers.

Matches the published version, 12 pages, 9 figures, 1 table

References in corpus (27)

• GWTC-2: Compact Binary Coalescences Observed by LIGO and Virgo During the First Half of the Third Observing Run
• GW190814: Gravitational Waves from the Coalescence of a 23 M${}_{\odot }$ Black Hole with a 2.6 M${}_{\odot }$ Compact Object
• GW190521: A Binary Black Hole Merger with a Total Mass of $150M_{\odot }$
• GW190412: Observation of a Binary-Black-Hole Coalescence with Asymmetric Masses
• Properties and astrophysical implications of the 150 Msun binary black hole merger GW190521
• Total recoil: the maximum kick from nonspinning black-hole binary inspiral
• Towards models of gravitational waveforms from generic binaries II: Modelling precession effects with a single effective precession parameter
• Mind the gap: The location of the lower edge of the pair instability supernovae black hole mass gap
• Illuminating Black Hole Binary Formation Channels with Spins in Advanced LIGO
• Analysis of spin precession in binary black hole systems including quadrupole-monopole interaction
• One Channel to Rule Them All? Constraining the Origins of Binary Black Holes using Multiple Formation Pathways
• Hierarchical mergers of stellar-mass black holes and their gravitational-wave signatures
• The Masses and Spins of Neutron Stars and Stellar-Mass Black Holes
• The Pair-Instability Mass Gap for Black Holes
• Hierarchical black hole mergers in young, globular and nuclear star clusters: the effect of metallicity, spin and cluster properties
• Evidence for hierarchical black hole mergers in the second LIGO--Virgo gravitational-wave catalog
• Spin Evolution of Stellar-mass Black Hole Binaries in Active Galactic Nuclei
• Effective potentials and morphological transitions for binary black-hole spin precession
• Repeated mergers and ejection of black holes within nuclear star clusters
• The Emergence of Structure in the Binary Black Hole Mass Distribution
• The mass gap, the spin gap, and the origin of merging binary black holes
• A generalized precession parameter ${\chi }_{\mathrm{p}}$ to interpret gravitational-wave data
• GW190412 as a Third-Generation Black Hole Merger from a Super Star Cluster
• Astrophysical implications of GW190412 as a remnant of a previous black-hole merger
• Pathways for producing binary black holes with large misaligned spins in the isolated formation channel
• Find the Gap: Black Hole Population Analysis with an Astrophysically Motivated Mass Function
• High mass but low spin: an exclusion region to rule out hierarchical black-hole mergers as a mechanism to populate the pair-instability mass gap

Cited by in corpus (24)

• GW231123: a Binary Black Hole Merger with Total Mass 190-265 $M_{\odot }$
• The Science of the Einstein Telescope
• Repeated mergers, mass-gap black holes, and formation of intermediate-mass black holes in nuclear star clusters
• Exploring Features in the Binary Black Hole Population
• Listening to the Universe with Next Generation Ground-Based Gravitational-Wave Detectors
• Deep learning and Bayesian inference of gravitational-wave populations: Hierarchical black-hole mergers
• Compact Binary Coalescences: Astrophysical Processes and Lessons Learned
• GW241011 and GW241110: Exploring Binary Formation and Fundamental Physics with Asymmetric, High-Spin Black Hole Coalescence
• First gravitational-wave search for intermediate-mass black hole mergers with higher order harmonics
• Gravitational-wave population inference at past time infinity
• Reconstructing the Genealogy of LIGO-Virgo Black Holes
• Avoiding a Cluster Catastrophe: Retention Efficiency and the Binary Black Hole Mass Spectrum
• Efficient multi-timescale dynamics of precessing black-hole binaries
• Binary black hole mergers from young massive clusters in the pair-instability supernova mass gap
• GW200208_222617 as an eccentric black-hole binary merger: properties and astrophysical implications
• Ancestral Black Holes of Binary Merger GW190521
• Spin Doctors: How to diagnose a hierarchical merger origin
• Possible binary neutron star merger history of the primary of GW230529
• One to many: comparing single gravitational-wave events to astrophysical populations
• Comparing hierarchical black hole mergers in star clusters and active galactic nuclei
• Constraining hierarchical mergers of binary black holes detectable with LIGO-Virgo
• Signatures of a subpopulation of hierarchical mergers in the GWTC-4 gravitational-wave dataset
• Single-event likelihood of star cluster properties with LIGO-Virgo-Kagra binary black hole observations
• Minimum gas mass accreted by spinning intermediate-mass black holes in stellar clusters