Signatures of generic precession in gravitational wave signals from merging binary black holes

Across three observing runs LIGO-Virgo-KAGRA (LVK) collaboration has observed nearly 100 gravitational wave (GW) signals, with about 90 originating from coalescing binary stellar mass black holes. In the coming decade, as LVK network detectors are on track to achieve their design sensitivities, the observed binary black hole merger population is set to increase by an order of magnitude. Such progress in GW astronomy will result in stricter population parameter estimates and valuable insights into the formation channels of binary black holes. Astrophysical black holes are generally spinning; depending on the formation channel of the binary, these spins and the orbital angular momentum of the binary can be misaligned causing precession and nutation of the orbit. Precession with nutation is classified as generic precession (as opposed to regular precession when there is no nutation) and causes exotic modulations in the GW signal. These modulations can be quantified by 5 parameters (2 for regular precession) based on the post-Newtonian timescale hierarchy (orbital < precessional < radiation-reaction) in coalescing binaries. We explore the generic precession parameter space for an isotropically oriented binary population and generate waveforms. We compare these generically precessing waveforms with regularly precessing and non-precessing waveforms using match-filtering techniques. We will finally investigate whether current sensitivities yield detectable nutation and assess how better sensitivities across the network can help distinguish precession and nutation.