On the Astrophysical Origin of Binary Black Hole Subpopulations: A Tale of Three Channels?

Abstract

There is increasing evidence for multiple binary black hole~(BBH) subpopulations in the cumulative gravitational wave catalog by the LIGO-Virgo-KAGRA Collaboration. The astrophysical interpretation of this complex underlying population is subject to theoretical uncertainties in treatments of binary stellar evolution, core collapse, and host environments. In this \textit{Letter}, using parametrized mixture models, we show that the BBH detection sample comprises three astrophysical subpopulations that are likely dominated by specific formation channels. In particular, we show that the $10M_{\odot }$ peak and the $35M_{\odot }$ feature in the BBH mass spectrum correspond to distinct mass-ratio, spin alignment, spin precession, and redshift evolution properties. We show that mass-based transitions reported in the distribution of BBH parameters naturally emerge from our inferred distributions without explicit modeling. Our results are consistent with the current observed population arising from specific relative abundances of isolated binary evolution, dynamical formation in globular clusters, and higher-generation BBH mergers. Under this interpretation, we constrain the relative underlying fraction of these channels to be $79.0_{-10.9}^{+11.5}\%$, $14.5_{-8.0}^{+11.6}\%$, and, $2.5_{-1.8}^{+5.5}\%$, respectively, and find these relative fractions to be evolving over cosmic time with more than $1\sigma$ confidence. Our interpretation relies on simple theoretical predictions that are mostly robust against uncertainties in BBH formation, with more definite conclusions expected in the near future.

Journal-accepted version

References in corpus (69)

• Advanced Virgo: a 2nd generation interferometric gravitational wave detector
• Cosmic Star Formation History
• Advanced LIGO
• Pulsational pair instability as an explanation for the most luminous supernovae
• Total recoil: the maximum kick from nonspinning black-hole binary inspiral
• 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
• Slowing the Spins of Stellar Cores
• Very massive stars, pair-instability supernovae and intermediate-mass black holes with the SEVN code
• Illuminating Black Hole Binary Formation Channels with Spins in Advanced LIGO
• Open data from the third observing run of LIGO, Virgo, KAGRA and GEO
• One Channel to Rule Them All? Constraining the Origins of Binary Black Holes using Multiple Formation Pathways
• Distinguishing Spin-Aligned and Isotropic Black Hole Populations With Gravitational Waves
• Hierarchical mergers of stellar-mass black holes and their gravitational-wave signatures
• The 12C(a,g)16O reaction and its implications for stellar helium burning
• Constraints from gravitational wave detections of binary black hole mergers on the ${}^{12}\mathrm{C}{\left(\alpha ,\gamma \right)}^{16}\mathrm{O}$ rate
• Hierarchical black hole mergers in young, globular and nuclear star clusters: the effect of metallicity, spin and cluster properties
• The impact of mass-transfer physics on the observable properties of field binary black hole populations
• Evidence for hierarchical black hole mergers in the second LIGO--Virgo gravitational-wave catalog
• Mass-gap Mergers in Active Galactic Nuclei
• Polluting the pair-instability mass gap for binary black holes through super-Eddington accretion in isolated binaries
• Modeling Dense Star Clusters in the Milky Way and Beyond with the Cluster Monte Carlo Code
• Accuracy Requirements for Empirically-Measured Selection Functions
• The most ordinary formation of the most unusual double black hole merger
• The Emergence of Structure in the Binary Black Hole Mass Distribution
• 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
• The impact of common envelope development criteria on the formation of LIGO/Virgo sources
• Formation channels of single and binary stellar-mass black holes
• The implications of high BH spins on the origin of BH-BH mergers
• Exploring Features in the Binary Black Hole Population
• Coalescing black hole binaries from globular clusters: mass distributions and comparison to gravitational wave data from GWTC-3
• A Parameter-Free Tour of the Binary Black Hole Population
• Understanding the high-mass binary black hole population from stable mass transfer and super-Eddington accretion in BPASS
• Suspicious Siblings: The Distribution of Mass and Spin Across Component Black Holes in Isolated Binary Evolution
• State of the field: Binary black hole natal kicks and prospects for isolated field formation after GWTC-2
• Remnant Black Hole Kicks and Implications for Hierarchical Mergers
• Non-parametric inference of the population of compact binaries from gravitational wave observations using binned Gaussian processes
• Deep learning and Bayesian inference of gravitational-wave populations: Hierarchical black-hole mergers
• LIGO--Virgo correlations between mass ratio and effective inspiral spin: testing the active galactic nuclei channel
• The role of supernova convection for the lower mass gap in the isolated binary formation of gravitational wave sources
• 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
• What You Don't Know Can Hurt You: Use and Abuse of Astrophysical Models in Gravitational-wave Population Analyses
• Limits on hierarchical black hole mergers from the most negative ${\chi }_{\mathrm{eff}}$ systems
• Black-hole mergers in disklike environments could explain the observed $q$-${\chi }_{\mathrm{eff}}$ correlation
• Hierarchical binary black hole mergers in globular clusters: mass function and evolution with redshift
• Filling the Black Hole Mass Gap: Avoiding Pair Instability in Massive Stars through Addition of Non-Nuclear Energy
• Tossing Black Hole Spin Axes
• Unequal-mass, highly-spinning binary black hole mergers in the stable mass transfer formation channel
• Avoiding a Cluster Catastrophe: Retention Efficiency and the Binary Black Hole Mass Spectrum
• The Redshift Evolution of the Binary Black Hole Mass Distribution from Dense Star Clusters
• Impact of natal kicks on merger rates and spin-orbit misalignments of black hole -- neutron star mergers
• 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
• Gravitational waves carry information beyond effective spin parameters but it is hard to extract
• Exploring the evolution of gravitational-wave emitters with efficient emulation: Constraining the origins of binary black holes using normalising flows
• Evidence of the pair instability gap from black hole masses
• Gravitational-wave Observations Suggest Most Black Hole Mergers Form in Triples
• Compactness peaks: An astrophysical interpretation of the mass distribution of merging binary black holes
• Reexamining Evidence of a Pair-Instability Mass Gap in the Binary Black Hole Population
• The steep redshift evolution of the hierarchical binary black hole merger rate may cause the $z$-${\chi }_{\mathrm{eff}}$ correlation
• A Mid-Thirties Crisis: Dissecting the Properties of Gravitational Wave Sources Near the 35 Solar Mass Peak
• McFACTS II: Mass Ratio--Effective Spin Relationship of Black Hole Mergers in the AGN Channel
• Shadows of the Colossus: Hierarchical Black Hole Mergers in a 10-million-body Globular Cluster Simulation
• Great Balls of FIRE IV. The contribution of massive star clusters to the astrophysical population of merging binary black holes
• A new group of low-spin $50-70M_{\odot }$ Black Holes and the high pair-instability mass cutoff
• Secular Spin-orbit Resonances of Black Hole Binaries in AGN Disks
• Population Synthesis of Gravitational Wave Sources

Cited by in corpus (1)

• No model-independent evidence for a peak in binary black hole spin (mis)alignments