Revealing Four Subpopulations of Binary Black-Hole Mergers with the Fifth Gravitational-Wave Transient Catalog

arXiv:2607.22011 · astro-ph.HE · Submitted 2026-07-24 · Read on arXiv

Nir Guttman, Paul D. Lasky, Eric Thrane

astro-ph.HE

Submitted: 2026-07-24

Comments: 17 pages, 5 figures

Code: https://github.com/NirGutt/Four-Subpopulations-of-Binary-Black-Hole-Mergers

License: http://arxiv.org/licenses/nonexclusive-distrib/1.0/

Terminology

• Alignment — 7× in this paper · explained in 1 episode
• Abundance — 1× in this paper · explained in 1 episode
• Academia Sinica — 1× in this paper
• Benchmark — 1× in this paper · explained in 2 episodes
• Consistency — 1× in this paper · explained in 3 episodes
• Core — 1× in this paper · explained in 2 episodes
• Robustness — 1× in this paper · explained in 5 episodes
• States National Science Foundation — 1× in this paper

Sources

• GWTC-5.0: An Introduction to Version 5.0 of the Gravitational-Wave Transient Catalog
• GWTC-5.0: Population Properties of Merging Compact Binaries
• GWTC-4.0: Population Properties of Merging Compact Binaries
• A subpopulation of low-mass, spinning black holes: signatures of dynamical assembly
• Characterizing Binary Black Hole Subpopulations in GWTC-4 with Binned Gaussian Processes: On the Origins of the $35M_{\odot}$ Peak
• Evidence for additional structure in the effective spin distribution hints at multiple formation pathways in GWTC-5.0
• Reversible-jump MCMC reveals binary black hole subpopulations with distinct redshift evolution
• Compactness Peaks and Subpopulations: Probing Stellar Physics and Formation Channels of Merging Binary Black Holes
• No model-independent evidence for a peak in binary black hole spin (mis)alignments
• Low-mass failed supernovae and the $10\,M_{\odot}$ peak in the merging black hole mass distribution
• GWPopulation: Hardware agnostic population inference for compact binaries and beyond
• Population of Binary Black Holes Inferred from One Hundred and Fifty Gravitational Wave Signals
• Joint population and strong-lensing inference for resolved gravitational-wave events probes the black-hole merger rate beyond the peak of star formation
• Emergent structure in the binary black hole mass distribution and implications for population-based cosmology
• A Thesaurus for Common Priors in Gravitational-Wave Astronomy
• Black hole mergers from dense star clusters with realistic binary populations
• When the black holes align: a subpopulation of aligned massive binary black holes observed via gravitational waves
• Transitions in the Mass-ratio and Spin Properties of Binary Black Holes in GWTC-5
• Distinct spin properties and astrophysical origin of low mass binary black holes in gravitational wave data
• Good things always come in 3s: trimodality in the binary black-hole chirp-mass distribution supports bimodal black-hole formation

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