Abstract Details
| Name: Parita Mehta Affiliation: ICTS-TIFR, Bengaluru Conference ID: ASI2019_387 Title : Understanding the astrophysical formation channels of binary black holes Authors and Co-Authors : P.Ajith and Sumit Kumar Abstract Type : Oral Abstract Category : General Relativity and Cosmology Abstract : The detection of gravitational waves (GWs) has uncovered a new population of black holes, with masses ranging from 20-100 solar masses. Formation and evolution of binaries of such black holes is a major question in modern astrophysics. Some of the plausible astrophysical scenarios are: i) isolated evolution of massive stars through a common envelope stage, ii) dynamical formation of binary black holes in dense stellar clusters iii) dynamical capture of primordial black holes in dark matter halos, and iv) hierarchical formation of binaries of population-III stellar remnants. Different scenarios predict different merger rates as a function of the cosmological redshift. With the global network of GW detectors, we expect a larger number of merger events to be observed, providing us the mass-redshift distribution of binary black holes. We develop a Bayesian model selection method to identify the dominant formation channels of binary black holes from upcoming GW observations. |