Characterizing the Population of Binary Black Holes with Detections of Arbitrary Significance

ORAL

Abstract

In this talk I will describe a novel framework to characterize the population of binary black holes using detections of arbitrary significance. I will quantify the information gain from the inclusion of marginal events and introduce a theoretical bound on the information content of the astrophysical stochastic background, derived with this framework. I will report constraints on the distributions of merging binary black hole masses, spins and rate derived from detections from the first two LIGO-Virgo observing runs, including those identified by our group, and how these get updated with results from the recent third observing run.

Authors

  • Javier Roulet

    Princeton University

  • Tejaswi Venumadhav

    University of California, Santa Barbara

  • Barak Zackay

    Weizmann Institute of Science

  • Liang Dai

    University of California, Berkeley

  • Matias Zaldarriaga

    Institute for Advanced Study

  • Seth Olsen

    Princeton University

  • Horng Sheng Chia

    Institute for Advanced Study, Institute for Advanced Study (IAS), Institute of Advanced Study