When the stars don't align: Investigating inconsistencies in binary black hole formation across population synthesis codes

arXiv:2608.21609 · astro-ph.HE, astro-ph.GA, astro-ph.SR · Submitted 2026-08-21 · Read on arXiv

astro-ph.HE, astro-ph.GA, astro-ph.SR

Submitted: 2026-08-21

Updated: 2026-09-21

Comments: 40 pages, 22 figures, 1 table. Submitted to ApJ

Code: https://github.com/POSYDON-code/POSYDON

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

Terminology

• Core — 68× in this paper · explained in 2 episodes
• Metallicity — 44× in this paper · explained in 3 episodes
• Population Synthesis — 6× in this paper · explained in 2 episodes
• Consistency — 4× in this paper · explained in 3 episodes
• Accretion Efficiency — 2× in this paper · explained in 2 episodes
• Accuracy — 2× in this paper · explained in 1 episode
• Robustness — 2× in this paper · explained in 5 episodes
• Abundance — 1× in this paper · explained in 1 episode
• Angular Momentum Transport — 1× in this paper · explained in 3 episodes
• Fidelity — 1× in this paper · explained in 2 episodes

Sources

• The Wide Field Infrared Survey Telescope: 100 Hubbles for the 2020s
• A Stellar Role Reversal: Multiple Features in the Mass and Mass Ratio Distributions of Merging Binary Black Holes from Stable Mass Transfer
• Lower Your Rates: On Claims of a Binary Black Hole Merger-Rate Crisis
• How Common Are Common Envelopes? Quantifying Their Role in Forming Gravitational-Wave Sources
• Propagating Uncertainties from Nuclear Physics to Gamma-rays in Core Collapse Supernovae
• Twin Peaks: Resolving Features in the Binary Black Hole Mass Function with COSMIC-METISSE
• The Stellar Winds Atlas II: Black Hole Formation at Solar Metallicity
• Massquerade: Impacts of Mass Ratio Reversals on Binary Black Hole Merger Rates and Mass Distributions
• Wide-Field InfraRed Survey Telescope-Astrophysics Focused Telescope Assets WFIRST-AFTA Final Report
• Wide-Field InfrarRed Survey Telescope-Astrophysics Focused Telescope Assets WFIRST-AFTA 2015 Report
• GWTC-5.0: Population Properties of Merging Compact Binaries
• GWTC-5.0: Observations from the Second Part of the Fourth LIGO-Virgo-KAGRA Observing Run and Updates to the Gravitational-Wave Transient Catalog
• Binary neutron star populations across cosmic time: the impact of binary stellar evolution uncertainties
• Streamlining and standardizing software citations with The Software Citation Station

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• XRISM Resolve Spectroscopy of GX 5-1: Constraints on Iron Spectral Features in a Luminous Neutron-Star Binary
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