Looking To The Horizon: Probing Evolution in the Black Hole Spectrum With Gravitational Wave Catalogs

Abstract

The population of black holes observed via gravitational waves currently covers the local universe up to a redshift $z\lesssim 1$, for the most massive merging binaries, or $z\lesssim 0.25$ for low-mass BH binaries (BBH). Evolution of the BBH mass spectrum over cosmic time will be a significant probe of formation channels and environments. We demonstrate a reconstruction of the BBH merger rate, allowing for general dependence on binary masses and luminosity distance or redshift and accounting for selection effects, via iterative kernel density estimation (KDE) with optimized multidimensional bandwidths. Performing such reconstructions under a range of detailed assumptions, we see no significant evidence for the evolution of BBH masses with redshift, over the range where detected events are available. At most, possible trends towards increasing merger rate with redshift for primary masses $m_1\gtrsim 50M_{\odot }$, or towards decreasing merger rate with redshift for primary masses $m_1\lesssim 40M\odot$ may be supported. We compare these findings with previous investigations and caution against over-interpreting the current, sparse, data. Significantly upgraded detectors and/or facilities, and longer observing times, are required to harness any correlations of the BBH mass distribution with redshift.

13 pages, 15 figures

References in corpus (56)

• 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
• Cosmic Star Formation History
• GWTC-1: A Gravitational-Wave Transient Catalog of Compact Binary Mergers Observed by LIGO and Virgo during the First and Second Observing Runs
• Advanced LIGO
• 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
• GWTC-3: Compact Binary Coalescences Observed by LIGO and Virgo During the Second Part of the Third Observing Run
• Common Envelope Evolution: Where we stand and how we can move forward
• Robust parameter estimation for compact binaries with ground-based gravitational-wave observations using the LALInference software library
• Binary Black Hole Population Properties Inferred from the First and Second Observing Runs of Advanced LIGO and Advanced Virgo
• Pulsational Pair-Instability Supernovae
• A new route towards merging massive black holes
• Inspiral-merger-ringdown waveforms for black-hole binaries with non-precessing spins
• Merging binary black holes formed through chemically homogeneous evolution in short-period stellar binaries
• Assisted Inspirals of Stellar Mass Black Holes Embedded in AGN Disks: Solving the "Final AU Problem"
• Binary Black Hole Mergers from Globular Clusters: Implications for Advanced LIGO
• The chemically homogeneous evolutionary channel for binary black hole mergers: rates and properties of gravitational-wave events detectable by advanced LIGO
• Merging black hole binaries in galactic nuclei: implications for advanced-LIGO detections
• 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
• Most Black Holes are Born Very Slowly Rotating
• One Channel to Rule Them All? Constraining the Origins of Binary Black Holes using Multiple Formation Pathways
• Lidov-Kozai Cycles with Gravitational Radiation: Merging Black Holes in Isolated Triple Systems
• On stellar-mass black hole mergers in AGN disks detectable with LIGO
• Does the Black Hole Merger Rate Evolve with Redshift?
• The origin of spin in binary black holes: Predicting the distributions of the main observables of Advanced LIGO
• Measuring the binary black hole mass spectrum with an astrophysically motivated parameterization
• Forming short-period Wolf-Rayet X-ray binaries and double black holes through stable mass transfer
• Compact Binaries in Star Clusters I - Black Hole Binaries Inside Globular Clusters
• Where are LIGO's Big Black Holes?
• Mergers of Stellar-Mass Black Holes in Nuclear Star Clusters
• The impact of mass-transfer physics on the observable properties of field binary black hole 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
• Shouts and Murmurs: Combining Individual Gravitational-Wave Sources with the Stochastic Background to Measure the History of Binary Black Hole Mergers
• The Emergence of Structure in the Binary Black Hole Mass Distribution
• Cover Your Basis: Comprehensive Data-Driven Characterization of the Binary Black Hole Population
• Binary black holes population and cosmology in new lights: Signature of PISN mass and formation channel in GWTC-3
• The spins of compact objects born from helium stars in binary systems
• Exploring Features in the Binary Black Hole Population
• A Parameter-Free Tour of the Binary Black Hole Population
• Suspicious Siblings: The Distribution of Mass and Spin Across Component Black Holes in Isolated Binary Evolution
• Non-parametric inference of the population of compact binaries from gravitational wave observations using binned Gaussian processes
• Signatures of mass ratio reversal in gravitational waves from merging binary black holes
• Flexible and Fast Estimation of Binary Merger Population Distributions with Adaptive KDE
• Evidence for the evolution of black hole mass function with redshift
• The ${\chi }_{\mathrm{eff}}-z$ correlation of field binary black hole mergers and how 3G gravitational-wave detectors can constrain it
• PixelPop: High Resolution Nonparameteric Inference of Gravitational-Wave Populations in Multiple Dimensions
• Binary vision: The merging black hole binary mass distribution via iterative density estimation
• Nonparametric analysis of correlations in the binary black hole population with LIGO-Virgo-KAGRA data
• No evidence that the binary black hole mass distribution evolves with redshift
• MOCCA-SURVEY Database -- I. Tidal disruption events of white dwarfs in globular clusters and young massive clusters
• Reconstructing parametric gravitational-wave population fits from non-parametric results without refitting the data
• Reconstructing the LISA massive black hole binary population via iterative kernel density estimation

Cited by in corpus (3)

• Where did Heavy Binaries Go? Gravitational-wave Populations Using Delaunay Triangulation with Optimized Complexity
• Seeking Spinning Subpopulations of Black Hole Binaries via Iterative Density Estimation
• Pushing spectral siren cosmology into the third-generation era: a blinded mock data challenge