GW190413_052954 33.4 +12.4 −7.4 23.4 +6.7 −6.3 7.2 × 10 −2 GW190413_134308 45.4 +13.6 −9.6 30.9 +10.2 −9.6 4.4 × 10 −2 GW190421_213856 40.6 +10.4 −6.631.4 +7.5 −8.2 7.7 × 10 −4 GW190424_180648 39.5 +10.9 −6.9 31.0 +7.428.5 +7.5 −7.9 1.0 × 10 −5 GW190512_180714 23.0 +5.4 −5.7 12.5 +3.5 −2.5

We report the observation of gravitational waves from a binary-black-hole coalescence during the first two weeks of LIGO's and Virgo's third observing run. The signal was recorded on April 12, 2019 at 05∶30∶44 UTC with a network signal-to-noise ratio of 19. The binary is different from observations during the first two observing runs most notably due to its asymmetric masses: a ∼30 M ⊙ black hole merged with a ∼8 M ⊙ black hole companion. The more massive black hole rotated with a dimensionless spin magnitude between 0.22 and 0.60 (90% probability). Asymmetric systems are predicted to emit gravitational waves with stronger contributions from higher multipoles, and indeed we find strong evidence for gravitational radiation beyond the leading quadrupolar order in the observed signal. A suite of tests performed on GW190412 indicates consistency with Einstein's general theory of relativity. While the mass ratio of this system differs from all previous detections, we show that it is consistent with the population model of stellar binary black holes inferred from the first two observing runs.

No abstract

While the Advanced LIGO and Virgo gravitational-wave (GW) experiments now regularly observe binary black hole (BBH) mergers, the evolutionary origin of these events remains a mystery. Analysis of the BBH spin distribution may shed light on this mystery, offering a means of discriminating between different binary formation channels. Using the data from Advanced LIGO and Virgo’s first and second observing runs, here we seek to carefully characterize the distribution of effective spin among BBHs, hierarchically measuring the distribution’s mean μ and variance σ 2 while accounting for selection effects and degeneracies between spin and other black hole parameters. We demonstrate that the known population of BBHs have spins that are both small, with μ ≈ 0, and very narrowly distributed, with σ 2 ≤ 0.07 at 95% credibility. We then explore what these ensemble properties imply about the spins of individual BBH mergers, reanalyzing existing GW events with a population-informed prior on their effective spin. Under this analysis, the BBH GW170729, which previously excluded , is now consistent with zero effective spin at ∼10% credibility. More broadly, we find that uninformative spin priors generally yield overestimates for the effective spin magnitudes of compact binary mergers.