Non-parametric inference of the population of compact binaries from gravitational wave observations using binned Gaussian processes

Abstract

The observation of gravitational waves from multiple compact binary coalescences by the LIGO-Virgo-KAGRA detector networks has enabled us to infer the underlying distribution of compact binaries across a wide range of masses, spins, and redshifts. In light of the new features found in the mass spectrum of binary black holes and the uncertainty regarding binary formation models, non-parametric population inference has become increasingly popular. In this work, we develop a data-driven clustering framework that can identify features in the component mass distribution of compact binaries simultaneously with those in the corresponding redshift distribution, from gravitational wave data in the presence of significant measurement uncertainties, while making very few assumptions on the functional form of these distributions. Our generalized model is capable of inferring correlations among various population properties such as the redshift evolution of the shape of the mass distribution itself, in contrast to most existing non-parametric inference schemes. We test our model on simulated data and demonstrate the accuracy with which it can re-construct the underlying distributions of component masses and redshifts. We also re-analyze public LIGO-Virgo-KAGRA data from events in GWTC-3 using our model and compare our results with those from some alternative parametric and non-parametric population inference approaches. Finally, we investigate the potential presence of correlations between mass and redshift in the population of binary black holes in GWTC-3 (those observed by the LIGO-Virgo-KAGRA detector network in their first 3 observing runs), without making any assumptions about the specific nature of these correlations.

arXiv commentUpload accepted version

References in corpus (61)

• Observation of Gravitational Waves from a Binary Black Hole Merger
• Planck 2015 results. XIII. Cosmological parameters
• Advanced Virgo: a 2nd generation interferometric gravitational wave detector
• Advanced LIGO
• How Massive Single Stars End their Life
• GW190814: Gravitational Waves from the Coalescence of a 23 M${}_{\odot }$ Black Hole with a 2.6 M${}_{\odot }$ Compact Object
• The Nucleosynthetic Signature of Population III
• Compact Remnant Mass Function: Dependence on the Explosion Mechanism and Metallicity
• Rotating Massive Main-Sequence Stars I: Grids of Evolutionary Models and Isochrones
• Observing binary inspiral in gravitational radiation: One interferometer
• Pulsational Pair-Instability Supernovae
• An introduction to Bayesian inference in gravitational-wave astronomy: parameter estimation, model selection, and hierarchical models
• Double Compact Objects III: Gravitational Wave Detection Rates
• Extracting distribution parameters from multiple uncertain observations with selection biases
• The Effect of Pair-Instability Mass Loss on Black Hole Mergers
• Mind the gap: The location of the lower edge of the pair instability supernovae black hole mass gap
• Black Holes: The Next Generation -- Repeated Mergers in Dense Star Clusters and their Gravitational-Wave Properties
• Open data from the third observing run of LIGO, Virgo, KAGRA and GEO
• Eccentric Black Hole Mergers Forming in Globular Clusters
• The effect of metallicity on the detection prospects for gravitational waves
• One Channel to Rule Them All? Constraining the Origins of Binary Black Holes using Multiple Formation Pathways
• The effect of the metallicity-specific star formation history on double compact object mergers
• Exoplanet population inference and the abundance of Earth analogs from noisy, incomplete catalogs
• Does the Black Hole Merger Rate Evolve with Redshift?
• Measuring the binary black hole mass spectrum with an astrophysically motivated parameterization
• Constraints on the cosmic expansion history from GWTC-3
• Constraints from gravitational wave detections of binary black hole mergers on the ${}^{12}\mathrm{C}{\left(\alpha ,\gamma \right)}^{16}\mathrm{O}$ rate
• Pulsational pair-instability supernovae in very close binaries
• Where are LIGO's Big Black Holes?
• Gravitational lensing of gravitational waves: A statistical perspective
• Reconstructing phenomenological distributions of compact binaries via gravitational wave observations
• The formation and hierarchical assembly of globular cluster populations
• The redshift evolution of the binary black hole merger rate: a weighty matter
• The properties of merging black holes and neutron stars across cosmic time
• Redshift Evolution of the Black Hole Merger Rate from Globular Clusters
• Maximum Black Hole mass across Cosmic Time
• Accuracy Requirements for Empirically-Measured Selection Functions
• The cosmic merger rate density evolution of compact binaries formed in young star clusters and in isolated binaries
• Is GW190521 the merger of black holes from the first stellar generations?
• Model-independent inference on compact-binary observations
• The Most Massive Binary Black Hole Detections and the Identification of Population Outliers
• The Emergence of Structure in the Binary Black Hole Mass Distribution
• Cover Your Basis: Comprehensive Data-Driven Characterization of the Binary Black Hole Population
• Predictions for the hydrogen-free ejecta of pulsational pair-instability supernovae
• Inferring the properties of a population of compact binaries in presence of selection effects
• No peaks without valleys: The stable mass transfer channel for gravitational-wave sources in light of the neutron star-black hole mass gap
• When are LIGO/Virgo's Big Black-Hole Mergers?
• Formation of Binary Black Holes Similar to GW190521 with a Total Mass of $\sim 150M_{\odot }$ from Population III Binary Star Evolution
• Binary black holes population and cosmology in new lights: Signature of PISN mass and formation channel in GWTC-3
• Exploring Features in the Binary Black Hole Population
• Ain't No Mountain High Enough: Semi-Parametric Modeling of LIGO-Virgos Binary Black Hole Mass Distribution
• VAMANA: Modeling Binary Black Hole Population with Minimal Assumptions
• Black Hole Mergers from Star Clusters with Top-Heavy Initial Mass Functions
• Flexible and Fast Estimation of Binary Merger Population Distributions with Adaptive KDE
• Potential Subpopulations and Assembling Tendency of the Merging Black Holes
• Poking Holes: Looking for Gaps in LIGO/Virgo's Black Hole Population
• Cosmic Evolution of Stellar-mass Black Hole Merger Rate in Active Galactic Nuclei
• Probing Extremal Gravitational-Wave Events with Coarse-Grained Likelihoods
• Gravitational Waves as a Probe of Globular Cluster Formation and Evolution
• Model exploration in gravitational-wave astronomy with the maximum population likelihood
• The Impact of metallicity evolution of the universe on the maximum mass of LIGO binary black holes

Cited by in corpus (29)

• Observation of Gravitational Waves from the Coalescence of a $2.5\text{-}4.5M_{\odot }$ Compact Object and a Neutron Star
• The Science of the Einstein Telescope
• Resolving the Stellar-Collapse and Hierarchical-Merger origins of the Coalescing Black Holes
• Evidence for the evolution of black hole mass function with redshift
• Evidence for a correlation between binary black hole mass ratio and black-hole spins
• Binary vision: The merging black hole binary mass distribution via iterative density estimation
• PixelPop: High Resolution Nonparameteric Inference of Gravitational-Wave Populations in Multiple Dimensions
• Nonparametric analysis of correlations in the binary black hole population with LIGO-Virgo-KAGRA data
• Applications of machine learning in gravitational wave research with current interferometric detectors
• Physical Models for the Astrophysical Population of Black Holes: Application to the Bump in the Mass Distribution of Gravitational Wave Sources
• Sampling the full hierarchical population posterior distribution in gravitational-wave astronomy
• Exploring the evolution of gravitational-wave emitters with efficient emulation: Constraining the origins of binary black holes using normalising flows
• Spin Doctors: How to diagnose a hierarchical merger origin
• No evidence that the binary black hole mass distribution evolves with redshift
• Reexamining Evidence of a Pair-Instability Mass Gap in the Binary Black Hole Population
• The more accurately the metal-dependent star formation rate is modeled, the larger the predicted excess of binary black hole mergers
• A Mid-Thirties Crisis: Dissecting the Properties of Gravitational Wave Sources Near the 35 Solar Mass Peak
• Reconstructing parametric gravitational-wave population fits from non-parametric results without refitting the data
• Where did Heavy Binaries Go? Gravitational-wave Populations Using Delaunay Triangulation with Optimized Complexity
• Looking To The Horizon: Probing Evolution in the Black Hole Spectrum With Gravitational Wave Catalogs
• Probing Spin-Orbit Resonances with the Binary Black Hole Population
• On the Astrophysical Origin of Binary Black Hole Subpopulations: A Tale of Three Channels?
• An analytical joint prior for effective spins for inference on the spin distribution of binary black holes
• Expect the unexpected: augmented mixture models for black-hole-population studies
• Measurement prospects for the pair-instability mass cutoff with gravitational waves
• Examining the Gap in the Chirp Mass Distribution of Binary Black Holes
• Where are Gaia's small black holes?
• Implications of low neutron star merger rates for gamma-ray bursts, r-process production and Galactic double neutron stars
• Probing the peak of star formation with the stochastic background of binary black hole mergers