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SUMMARY:The binary black holes of LIGO and Virgo - Javier Roulet (UCSB)
DTSTART:20220121T130000Z
DTEND:20220121T140000Z
UID:TALK167618@talks.cam.ac.uk
CONTACT:Justin Ripley
DESCRIPTION:The LIGO and Virgo observatories have identified nearly a hund
 red gravitational wave signals from compact binary mergers. These detectio
 ns\, and their astrophysical interpretation\, are only possible due to sop
 histicated data analysis algorithms.\nIn this seminar I will overview a se
 ries of independent analyses of public LIGO–Virgo data by our group\, go
 ing the way from the raw strain data to the characterization of the astrop
 hysical population of merging compact objects. This involves identifying s
 ignals in noisy data\, estimating their source parameters\, and using the 
 aggregated set of detections to test and inform models of the population.\
 nWe developed a search pipeline that improved the sensitivity by rigorousl
 y accounting for inherent systematics. I will overview some of its salient
  features and highlight recent results\, whereby we confirmed previous eve
 nts and identified 19 new ones.\nThese sources are characterized by 15 par
 ameters\, whose estimation is computationally challenging. I will introduc
 e a set of analytic\, invertible coordinate transformations that facilitat
 e this task by removing several degeneracies and multimodalities typically
  encountered.\nFinally\, I will show that the observed distribution of bla
 ck hole spin orientations is anisotropic\, disfavoring dynamical formation
  channels as the only pathway for merging binary black holes.
LOCATION:Zoom
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