arXiv subjects

Davide Gerosa

Publications and source records attributed to Davide Gerosa.

At least 91 records · Page 5Linked to original sources

arXiv2021

Hierarchical mergers of stellar-mass black holes and their gravitational-wave signatures

We review theoretical findings, astrophysical modeling, and current gravitational-wave evidence of hierarchical stellar-mass black-hole mergers. While most of the compact binary mergers detected by LIGO and Virgo are expected to consist of first-generation black holes formed from the collapse of stars, others might instead be of second (or higher) generation, containing the remnants of previous black-hole mergers. Such a subpopulation of hierarchically assembled black holes presents distinctive gravitational-wave signatures, namely higher masses, possibly within the pair-instability mass gap, and dimensionless spins clustered at the characteristic value of $\sim$0.7. In order to produce hierarchical mergers, astrophysical environments need to overcome the relativistic recoils imparted to black-hole merger remnants, a condition which prefers hosts with escape speeds $\gtrsim$ 100 km/s. Promising locations for efficient production of hierarchical mergers include nuclear star clusters and accretion disks surrounding active galactic nuclei, though environments that are less efficient at retaining merger products such as globular clusters may still contribute significantly to the detectable population of repeated mergers. While GW190521 is the single most promising hierarchical-merger candidate to date, constraints coming from large population analyses are becoming increasingly more powerful.

astro-ph.HE↗

arXiv2021

High mass but low spin: an exclusion region to rule out hierarchical black-hole mergers as a mechanism to populate the pair-instability mass gap

The occurrence of pair-instability supernovae is predicted to prevent the formation of black holes with masses $\gtrsim 50 M_\odot$. Recent gravitational-wave detections in this mass range require an explanation beyond that of standard stellar collapse. Current modeling strategies include the hierarchical assembly of previous generations of black-hole mergers as well as other mechanisms of astrophysical nature (lowered nuclear-reaction rates, envelope retention, stellar mergers, accretion, dredge-up episodes). In this paper, we point out the occurrence of an exclusion region that cannot be easily populated by hierarchical black-hole mergers. A future gravitational-wave detection of a black hole with mass $\gtrsim 50M_\odot$ and spin $\lesssim 0.2$ will indicate that the pair-instability mass gap is polluted in some other way. Such a putative outlier can be explained using hierarchical mergers only with considerable fine-tuning of both mass ratio and spins of the preceding black-hole merger -- an assumption that can then be cross-checked against the bulk of the gravitational-wave catalog.

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arXiv2021

Testing general relativity with gravitational-wave catalogs: the insidious nature of waveform systematics

Gravitational-wave observations of binary black holes allow new tests of general relativity to be performed on strong, dynamical gravitational fields. These tests require accurate waveform models of the gravitational-wave signal, otherwise waveform errors can erroneously suggest evidence for new physics. Existing waveforms are generally thought to be accurate enough for current observations, and each of the events observed to date appears to be individually consistent with general relativity. In the near future, with larger gravitational-wave catalogs, it will be possible to perform more stringent tests of gravity by analyzing large numbers of events together. However, there is a danger that waveform errors can accumulate among events: even if the waveform model is accurate enough for each individual event, it can still yield erroneous evidence for new physics when applied to a large catalog. This paper presents a simple linearised analysis, in the style of a Fisher matrix calculation, that reveals the conditions under which the apparent evidence for new physics due to waveform errors grows as the catalog size increases. We estimate that, in the worst-case scenario, evidence for a deviation from general relativity might appear in some tests using a catalog containing as few as 10-30 events above a signal-to-noise ratio of 20. This is close to the size of current catalogs and highlights the need for caution when performing these sorts of experiments.

gr-qc↗

arXiv2021

A taxonomy of black-hole binary spin precession and nutation

Binary black holes with misaligned spins will generically induce both precession and nutation of the orbital angular momentum $\bf{L}$ about the total angular momentum $\bf{J}$. These phenomena modulate the phase and amplitude of the gravitational waves emitted as the binary inspirals to merger. We introduce a "taxonomy" of binary black-hole spin precession that encompasses all the known phenomenology, then present five new phenomenological parameters that describe generic precession and constitute potential building blocks for future gravitational waveform models. These are the precession amplitude $\langleθ_L\rangle$, the precession frequency $\langle Ω_L\rangle$, the nutation amplitude $Δθ_L$, the nutation frequency $ω$, and the precession-frequency variation $ΔΩ_L$. We investigate the evolution of these five parameters during the inspiral and explore their statistical properties for sources with isotropic spins. In particular, we find that nutation of $\bf{L}$ is most prominent for binaries with high spins ($χ\gtrsim 0.5$) and moderate mass ratios ($q \sim 0.6$).

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arXiv2021

A generalized precession parameter $χ_\mathrm{p}$ to interpret gravitational-wave data

Originally designed for waveform approximants, the effective precession parameter $χ_\mathrm{p}$ is the most commonly used quantity to characterize spin-precession effects in gravitational-wave observations of black-hole binary coalescences. We point out that the current definition of $χ_\mathrm{p}$ retains some, but not all, variations taking place on the precession timescale. We rectify this inconsistency and propose more general definitions that either fully consider or fully average those oscillations. Our generalized parameter $χ_\mathrm{p}\in[0,2]$ presents an exclusive region $χ_\mathrm{p}>1$ that can only be populated by binaries with two precessing spins. We apply our prescriptions to current LIGO/Virgo events and find that posterior distributions of $χ_\mathrm{p}$ tend to show longer tails at larger values. This appears to be a generic feature, implying that (i) current $χ_\mathrm{p}$ measurement errors might be underestimated, but also that (ii) evidence for spin precession in current data might be stronger than previously inferred. Among the gravitational-wave events released to date, that which shows the most striking behavior is GW190521.

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arXiv2021

Eccentric binary black hole surrogate models for the gravitational waveform and remnant properties: comparable mass, nonspinning case

We develop new strategies to build numerical relativity surrogate models for eccentric binary black hole systems, which are expected to play an increasingly important role in current and future gravitational-wave detectors. We introduce a new surrogate waveform model, \texttt{NRSur2dq1Ecc}, using 47 nonspinning, equal-mass waveforms with eccentricities up to $0.2$ when measured at a reference time of $5500M$ before merger. This is the first waveform model that is directly trained on eccentric numerical relativity simulations and does not require that the binary circularizes before merger. The model includes the $(2,2)$, $(3,2)$, and $(4,4)$ spin-weighted spherical harmonic modes. We also build a final black hole model, \texttt{NRSur2dq1EccRemnant}, which models the mass, and spin of the remnant black hole. We show that our waveform model can accurately predict numerical relativity waveforms with mismatches $\approx 10^{-3}$, while the remnant model can recover the final mass and dimensionless spin with absolute errors smaller than $\approx 5 \times 10^{-4}M$ and $\approx 2 \times10^{-3}$ respectively. We demonstrate that the waveform model can also recover subtle effects like mode-mixing in the ringdown signal without any special ad-hoc modeling steps. Finally, we show that despite being trained only on equal-mass binaries, \texttt{NRSur2dq1Ecc} can be reasonably extended up to mass ratio $q\approx3$ with mismatches $\simeq 10^{-2}$ for eccentricities smaller than $\sim 0.05$ as measured at a reference time of $2000M$ before merger. The methods developed here should prove useful in the building of future eccentric surrogate models over larger regions of the parameter space.

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arXiv2021

Up-down instability of binary black holes in numerical relativity

Binary black holes with spins that are aligned with the orbital angular momentum do not precess. However, post-Newtonian calculations predict that "up-down" binaries, in which the spin of the heavier (lighter) black hole is aligned (antialigned) with the orbital angular momentum, are unstable when the spins are slightly perturbed from perfect alignment. This instability provides a possible mechanism for the formation of precessing binaries in environments where sources are preferentially formed with (anti) aligned spins. In this paper, we present the first full numerical relativity simulations capturing this instability. These simulations span $\sim 100$ orbits and $\sim 3$-$5$ precession cycles before merger, making them some of the longest numerical relativity simulations to date. Initialized with a small perturbation of $1^{\circ}$-$10^{\circ}$, the instability causes a dramatic growth of the spin misalignments, which can reach $\sim 90^{\circ}$ near merger. We show that this leaves a strong imprint on the subdominant modes of the gravitational wave signal, which can potentially be used to distinguish up-down binaries from other sources. Finally, we show that post-Newtonian and effective-one-body approximants are able to reproduce the unstable dynamics of up-down binaries extracted from numerical relativity.

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arXiv2021

Massive black hole binary inspiral and spin evolution in a cosmological framework

Massive black hole (MBH) binary inspiral time scales are uncertain, and their spins are even more poorly constrained. Spin misalignment, along with unequal mass ratios and spin magnitudes, introduces asymmetry in the gravitational radiation, which imparts a recoil kick to the merged MBH. Understanding how MBH binary spins evolve is crucial for determining their recoil velocities, their gravitational wave (GW) waveforms detectable with LISA, as well as their post-merger retention rate in galaxies and thus their subsequent merger rate. Here we present a novel study that introduces a sub-resolution model for gas- and GW-driven MBH binary spin evolution using a population of accreting MBHs from the Illustris cosmological hydrodynamics simulations. We also model sub-resolution binary inspiral via dynamical friction, stellar scattering, viscous gas drag, and GW emission. Our model assumes differential accretion, which causes greater alignment of the secondary MBH spin in unequal-mass mergers. We find that 47% of the MBHs in our population merge by $z=0$. Of these, 19% have misaligned primaries and 10% have misaligned secondaries at the time of merger in our (conservative) fiducial model. The MBH misalignment fraction depends strongly on the accretion disc parameters, however. Reducing accretion rates by a factor of 100, in a thicker disc, yields 79% and 42% misalignment for primaries and secondaries, respectively. Even in the fiducial model, more than 12% of binaries experience recoils of $>500$ km s$^{-1}$, which could displace them at least temporarily from galactic nuclei. We additionally find that a significant number of systems experience strong precession.

astro-ph.GA↗

arXiv2020

Gravitational-wave selection effects using neural-network classifiers

We present a novel machine-learning approach to estimate selection effects in gravitational-wave observations. Using techniques similar to those commonly employed in image classification and pattern recognition, we train a series of neural-network classifiers to predict the LIGO/Virgo detectability of gravitational-wave signals from compact-binary mergers. We include the effect of spin precession, higher-order modes, and multiple detectors and show that their omission, as it is common in large population studies, tends to overestimate the inferred merger rate in selected regions of the parameter space. Although here we train our classifiers using a simple signal-to-noise ratio threshold, our approach is ready to be used in conjunction with full pipeline injections, thus paving the way toward including actual distributions of astrophysical and noise triggers into gravitational-wave population analyses.

astro-ph.HE↗

arXiv2020

Mapping the asymptotic inspiral of precessing binary black holes to their merger remnants

Multiple approaches are required to study the evolution of black-hole binaries. While the post-Newtonian approximation is sufficient to describe the early inspiral (even from infinitely large orbital separation), only numerical relativity can capture the full complexity of the dynamics near merger. We combine multi-timescale post-Newtonian integrations with numerical-relativity surrogate models, thus mapping the entire history of the binary from its asymptotic configuration at past-time infinity to the post-merger remnant. This approach naturally allows us to assess the impact of the precessional and orbital phase on the properties - mass, spin, and kick - of the merger remnant. These phases introduce a fundamental uncertainty when connecting the two extrema of the binary evolution.

gr-qc↗

arXiv2020

Core collapse in massive scalar-tensor gravity

This paper provides an extended exploration of the inverse-chirp gravitational-wave signals from stellar collapse in massive scalar-tensor gravity reported in [Phys. Rev. Lett. {\bf 119}, 201103]. We systematically explore the parameter space that characterizes the progenitor stars, the equation of state and the scalar-tensor theory of the core collapse events. We identify a remarkably simple and straightforward classification scheme of the resulting collapse events. For any given set of parameters, the collapse leads to one of three end states, a weakly scalarized neutron star, a strongly scalarized neutron star or a black hole, possibly formed in multiple stages. The latter two end states can lead to strong gravitational-wave signals that may be detectable in present continuous-wave searches with ground-based detectors. We identify a very sharp boundary in the parameter space that separates events with strong gravitational-wave emission from those with negligible radiation.

gr-qc↗

arXiv2020

Astrophysical implications of GW190412 as a remnant of a previous black-hole merger

Two of the dominant channels to produce merging stellar-mass black-hole binaries are believed to be the isolated evolution of binary stars in the field and dynamical formation in star clusters. The first reported black-hole binary event from the third LIGO/Virgo observing run (GW190412) is unusual in that it has unequal masses, nonzero effective spin, and nonzero primary spin at 90\% confidence interval. We show that this event should be exceedingly rare in the context of both the field and cluster formation scenarios. Interpreting GW190412 as a remnant of a previous black-hole merger provides a promising route to explain its features. If GW190412 indeed formed hierarchically, we show that the region of the parameter space that is best motivated from an astrophysical standpoint (low natal spins and light clusters) cannot accommodate the observation. We analyze public GW190412 LIGO/Virgo data with a Bayesian prior where the more massive black hole resulted from a previous merger, and find that this interpretation is equally supported by the data. If the heavier component of GW190412 is indeed a merger remnant, then its spin magnitude is $χ_1=0.56_{-0.21}^{+0.19}$, which is higher than the value previously reported by the LIGO/Virgo collaboration.

astro-ph.HE↗

arXiv2020

Structure of neutron stars in massive scalar-tensor gravity

We compute families of spherically symmetric neutron-star models in two-derivative scalar-tensor theories of gravity with a massive scalar field. The numerical approach we present allows us to compute the resulting spacetimes out to infinite radius using a relaxation algorithm on a compactified grid. We discuss the structure of the weakly and strongly scalarized branches of neutron-star models thus obtained and their dependence on the linear and quadratic coupling parameters $α_0$, $β_0$ between the scalar and tensor sectors of the theory, as well as the scalar mass $μ$. For highly negative values of $β_0$, we encounter configurations resembling a "gravitational atom", consisting of a highly compact baryon star surrounded by a scalar cloud. A stability analysis based on binding-energ calculations suggests that these configurations are unstable and we expect them to migrate to models with radially decreasing baryon density {\it and} scalar field strength.

gr-qc↗

arXiv2020

The mass gap, the spin gap, and the origin of merging binary black holes

Two of the dominant channels to produce the black-hole binary mergers observed by LIGO and Virgo are believed to be the isolated evolution of stellar binaries in the field and dynamical formation in star clusters. Their relative efficiency can be characterized by a "mixing fraction." Pair instabilities prevent stellar collapse from generating black holes more massive than about $45 M_\odot$. This "mass gap" only applies to the field formation scenario, and it can be filled by repeated mergers in clusters. A similar reasoning applies to the binary's effective spin. If black holes are born slowly rotating, the high-spin portion of the parameter space (the "spin gap") can only be populated by black hole binaries that were assembled dynamically. Using a semianalytical cluster model, we show that future gravitational-wave events in either the mass gap, the spin gap, or both can be leveraged to infer the mixing fraction between the field and cluster formation channels.

astro-ph.HE↗

arXiv2020

Milky Way Satellites Shining Bright in Gravitational Waves

The population of Milky Way satellite galaxies is of great interest for cosmology, fundamental physics, and astrophysics. They represent the faint end of the galaxy luminosity function, are the most dark-matter dominated objects in the local Universe, and contain the oldest and most metal-poor stellar populations. Recent surveys have revealed around 60 satellites, but this could represent less than half of the total. Characterization of these systems remains a challenge due to their low luminosity. We consider the gravitational wave observatory LISA as a potential tool for studying these satellites through observations of their short-period double white dwarf populations. LISA will observe the entire sky without selection effects due to dust extinction, complementing optical surveys, and could potentially discover massive satellites hidden behind the disk of the galaxy.

astro-ph.GA↗

arXiv2020

The Bardeen-Petterson effect in accreting supermassive black-hole binaries: a systematic approach

Disc-driven migration is a key evolutionary stage of supermassive black-hole binaries hosted in gas-rich galaxies. Besides promoting the inspiral, viscous interactions tend to align the spins of the black holes with the orbital angular momentum of the disc. We present a critical and systematic investigation of this problem, also known as the Bardeen-Petterson effect. We design a new iterative scheme to solve the non-linear dynamics of warped accretion discs under the influence of both relativistic frame dragging and binary companion. We characterize the impact of the disc "critical obliquity", which marks regions of the parameter space where stationary solutions do not exist. We find that black-hole spins reach either complete alignment or a critical configuration. Reaching the critical obliquity might imply that the disc breaks as observed in hydrodynamical simulations. Our findings are important to predict the spin configurations with which supermassive black-hole binaries enter their gravitational-wave driven regime and become detectable by LISA.

astro-ph.GA↗

arXiv2020

Endpoint of the up-down instability in precessing binary black holes

Binary black holes in which both spins are aligned with the binary's orbital angular momentum do not precess. However, the up-down configuration, in which the spin of the heavier (lighter) black hole is aligned (anti-aligned) with the orbital angular momentum, is unstable to spin precession at small orbital separations. We first cast the spin precession problem in terms of a simple harmonic oscillator and provide a cleaner derivation of the instability onset. Surprisingly, we find that following the instability, up-down binaries do not disperse in the available parameter space but evolve toward precise endpoints. We then present an analytic scheme to locate these final configurations and confirm them with numerical integrations. Namely, unstable up-down binaries approach mergers with the two spins coaligned with each other and equally misaligned with the orbital angular momentum. Merging up-down binaries relevant to LIGO/Virgo and LISA may be detected in these endpoint configurations if the instability onset occurs prior to the sensitivity threshold of the detector. As a by-product, we obtain new generic results on binary black hole spin-orbit resonances at 2nd~post-Newtonian order. We finally apply these findings to a simple astrophysical population of binary black holes where a formation mechanism aligns the spins without preference for co- or counteralignment, as might be the case for stellar-mass black holes embedded in the accretion disk of a supermassive black hole.

gr-qc↗

arXiv2020

Constraining the fraction of binary black holes formed in isolation and young star clusters with gravitational-wave data

Ten binary black-hole mergers have already been detected during the first two observing runs of advanced LIGO and Virgo, and many more are expected to be observed in the near future. This opens the possibility for gravitational-wave astronomy to better constrain the properties of black hole binaries, not only as single sources, but as a whole astrophysical population. In this paper, we address the problem of using gravitational-wave measurements to estimate the proportion of merging black holes produced either via isolated binaries or binaries evolving in young star clusters. To this end, we use a Bayesian hierarchical modeling approach applied to catalogs of merging binary black holes generated using state-of-the-art population synthesis and N-body codes. In particular, we show that, although current advanced LIGO/Virgo observations only mildly constrain the mixing fraction $f \in [0,1]$ between the two formation channels, we expect to narrow down the fractional errors on $f$ to $10-20\%$ after a few hundreds of detections.

astro-ph.HE↗