We analyse the LIGO-Virgo data, including the recently released GWTC-2 dataset, to test a hypothesis that the data contains more than one population of black holes. We perform a maximum likelihood analysis including a population of astrophysical black holes with a truncated power-law mass function whose merger rate follows from star formation rate, and a population of primordial black holes for which we consider log-normal and critical collapse mass functions. We find that primordial black holes alone are strongly disfavoured by the data, while the best fit is obtained for the template combining astrophysical and primordial merger rates. Alternatively, the data may hint towards two different astrophysical black hole populations. We also update the constraints on primordial black hole abundance from LIGO-Virgo observations finding that in the $2-400M_\odot$ mass range they must comprise less than 0.2% of dark matter.
We discuss a possible connection between the recent NANOGrav results and the primordial black holes (PBHs) for the LIGO-Virgo events. In particular, we focus on the axion-like curvaton model, which provides a sizable amount of PBHs and GWs induced by scalar perturbations around the NANOGrav frequency range. The inevitable non-Gaussianity of this model suppresses the induced GWs associated with PBHs for the LIGO-Virgo events to be compatible with the NANOGrav results. We show that the axion-like curvaton model can account for PBHs for the LIGO-Virgo events and the NANOGrav results simultaneousl…
We investigate how to use information on the effective spin parameter of binary black hole mergers from the LIGO-Virgo gravitational wave detections to discriminate the origin of the merging black holes. We calculate the expected probability distribution function for the effective spin parameter for primordial black holes. Using LIGO-Virgo observations, we then calculate odds ratios for different models for the distribution of black holes' spin magnitude and alignment. We evaluate the posterior probability density for a possible mixture of astrophysical and primordial black holes as emerging f…
We propose that $O(10 M_{\rm Sun})$ black holes observed by LIGO/Virgo originate from a first order QCD phase transition at a temperature $T_* \lesssim 100$~MeV. This is realized by keeping the quark masses small compared to confinement scale down to $T\sim T_*$, making QCD transition first order. We implement this scenario using a light scalar that could potentially be a good dark matter candidate.
Microlenses with typical stellar masses (a few ${\rm M}_{\odot}$) have traditionally been disregarded as potential sources of gravitational lensing effects at LIGO/Virgo frequencies, since the time delays are often much smaller than the inverse of the frequencies probed by LIGO/Virgo, resulting in negligible interference effects at LIGO/Virgo frequencies. While this is true for isolated microlenses in this mass regime, we show how, under certain circumstances and for realistic scenarios, a population of microlenses (for instance stars and remnants from a galaxy halo or from the intracluster me…
We show that if the new physics beyond the Standard Model is associated with a first-order phase transition around $10^7-10^8$ GeV, the energy density stored in the resulting stochastic gravitational waves and the corresponding peak frequency are within the projected final sensitivity of the advanced LIGO/VIRGO detectors. We discuss some possible new physics scenarios that could arise at such energies, and in particular, the consequences for Peccei-Quinn and supersymmetry breaking scales.
Advanced LIGO and Advanced Virgo will be all-sky monitors for merging compact objects within a few hundred Mpc. Finding the electromagnetic counterparts to these events will require an understanding of the transient sky at low red-shift (z<0.1). We performed a systematic search for extragalactic, low red-shift, transient events in the XMM-Newton Slew Survey. In a flux limited sample, we found that highly-variable objects comprised 10% of the sample, and that of these, 10% were spatially coincident with cataloged optical galaxies. This led to 4x10^-4 transients per square degree above a flux th…
We study the impact of the black hole binary population currently probed by LIGO-Virgo on future searches for the primordial gravitational wave background. We estimate the foreground generated by the binaries using the observed event rate and a simple modeling of the black hole population. We subtract individually resolvable binaries from the foreground and utilize Fisher analysis to derive sensitivity curves for power-law signals including these astrophysical foregrounds. Even with optimistic assumptions, we find that the reach of future experiments will be severely reduced.
With several dozen binary black hole events detected by LIGO/Virgo to date and many more expected in the next few years, gravitational-wave astronomy is shifting from individual-event analyses to population studies. Using the GWTC-2 catalog, we perform a hierarchical Bayesian analysis that for the first time combines several state-of-the-art astrophysical formation models with a population of primordial black holes (PBHs) and constrains the fraction of a putative subpopulation of PBHs in the data. We find that this fraction depends significantly on the set of assumed astrophysical models. Whil…
Gravitational wave detection from binary black hole (BBH) inspirals has become routine thanks to the LIGO/Virgo interferometers. The nature of these back holes remains uncertain. We study here the spin distributions of LIGO/Virgo black holes from the first catalogue GWTC-1 and the first four published BBH events from run O3. We compute the Bayes evidence for several independent priors: flat, isotropic, spin-aligned and anti-aligned. We find strong evidence for low spins in all of the cases, and significant evidence for small isotropic spins versus any other distribution. When considered as a h…
We put constraints on the normalized energy density in gravitaional waves from cosmic domain walls (DWs) by searching for the stochastic gravitational-wave background (SGWB) in the data of Advanced LIGO and Virgo's first three observing runs. By adopting a phenomenological broken power-law model, we obtain the upper limit of normalized energy density of SGWB generated by DWs in the peak frequency band $10\sim200$ Hz, and get the most stringent limitation at the peak frequency $f_*=35$ Hz, namely $Ω_\text{DW}(f_*=35\,\text{Hz})<1.4\times10^{-8}$ at $95\%$ confidence level (CL). Subsequently, we…
Strong lensing of gravitational waves is more likely for distant sources but predicted event rates are highly uncertain with many astrophysical origins proposed. Here we open a new avenue to estimate the event rate of strongly lensed systems by exploring the amplitude of the stochastic gravitational wave background (SGWB). This method can provide a direct upper bound on the high redshift binary coalescing rates, which can be translated into an upper bound on the expected rate of strongly lensed systems. We show that from the ongoing analysis of the Laser Interferometer Gravitational-wave Obser…
Direct and unequivocal detection of gravitational waves represents a great challenge of contemporary physics and astrophysics. A worldwide effort is currently operating towards this direction, building ever sensitive detectors, improving the modelling of gravitational wave sources and employing ever more sophisticated and powerful data analysis techniques. In this paper we review the current status of LIGO and Virgo ground based interferometric detectors and some data analysis tools used in the continuous wave searches to extract the faint gravitational signals from the interferometric noise d…
The probability number distribution function of binary black hole mergers observed by LIGO/Virgo O3a has double peaks as a function of chirp mass $M_c$, total mass $M_t$, primary black hole mass $M_1$ and secondary one $M_2$, respectively. The larger chirp mass peak is at $M_c \cong 30 M_{\odot}$. The distribution of $M_2$ vs. $M_1$ follows the relation of $M_2\cong 0.7M_1$. For initial mass functions of Population III stars in the form of $f(M) \propto M^{-α}$, population synthesis numerical simulations with $0\leq α\leq 1.5$ are consistent with O3a data for $M_c \gtrsim 20M_{\odot}$. The dis…
We present a simple but general argument that strongly limits the abundance of Primordial Black Holes (PBHs) (or other unknown population of compact objects) with masses similar to those determined by LIGO/Virgo from BH binary mergers. We show that quasar microlensing can be very sensitive to the mass of the lenses, and that it is able to distinguish between stars and BHs of high mass, when the finite size of the source is taken into account. A significant presence of massive BHs would produce frequent high flux magnifications (except for unrealistically large sources) which have been very rar…
The LIGO/Virgo collaboration has by now observed or constrained the gravitational merger rates of different classes of compact objects. We consider the possibility that the bulk of these mergers are primordial black hole (PBH) mergers of PBHs formed during the QCD epoch making up the entirety of the dark matter. Having shown in a companion paper that mergers due to the initial binary population formed in the early Universe are likely negligible, we compute current merger rates in PBH clusters in which the typical PBH resides. We consider two scenarios: (i) the PBH mass function dictated by the…
We demonstrate a single-parameter route for reproducing higher mass objects as observed in the LIGO--Virgo mass distribution, using only the isolated binary stellar evolution channel. This single parameter encodes the cosmological mass growth of compact stellar remnants that exceed the Tolman-Oppenheimer-Volkoff limit. Cosmological mass growth appears in known solutions to General Relativity with cosmological boundary conditions. We consider the possibility of solutions with cosmological boundary conditions, which reduce to Kerr on timescales short compared to the Hubble time. We discuss compl…
Short Gamma Ray Bursts (SGRB) are believed to originate from the merger of two compact objects. If this scenario is correct, SGRB will be accompanied by the emission of strong gravitational waves, detectable by current or planned GW detectors, such as LIGO and Virgo. No detection of a gravitational wave has been made up to date. In this paper I will use a set of SGRB with observed redshifts to fit a model describing the cumulative number of SGRB as a function of redshift, to determine the rate of such merger events in the nearby universe. These estimations will be used to make probability stat…
We derive some of the central equations governing quantum fluctuations in gravitational waves, making use of general relativity as a sensible effective quantum theory at large distances. We begin with a review of classical gravitational waves in general relativity, including the energy in each mode. We then form the quantum ground state and coherent state, before then obtaining an explicit class of squeezed states. Since existing gravitational wave detections arise from merging black holes, and since the quantum nature of black holes remains puzzling, one can be open-minded to the possibility …
Assuming a population of Black Holes (BHs) with masses in the range inferred by LIGO/Virgo from BH mergers, we use quasar microlensing observations to estimate their abundances. We consider a mixed population of stars and BHs and the presence of a smooth dark matter component. We adopt reverberation mapping estimates of the quasar size. According to a Bayesian analysis of the measured microlensing magnifications, a population of BHs with masses $\sim$ 30$M_{\odot}$ constitutes less than 0.4 % of the total matter at 68 % confidence level (less than 0.9 % at 90 % confidence). We have explored th…
We show that the physical conditions which induce the Thakurta metric, recently studied by Bœhm {\it et al.} in the context of time-dependent black hole masses, correspond to a single accreting black hole in the entire Universe filled with isotropic non-interacting dust. In such a case, the physics of black hole accretion is not local but tied to the properties of the whole Universe. We show that radiation, primordial black holes or particle dark matter cannot produce the specific energy flux required for supporting the mass growth of Thakurta black holes. In particular, this solution does not…
We present a new constraint on the Hubble constant $H_0$ using a sample of well-localized gravitational wave (GW) events detected during the first three LIGO/Virgo observing runs as dark standard sirens. In the case of dark standard sirens, a unique host galaxy is not identified, and the redshift information comes from the distribution of potential host galaxies. From the third LIGO/Virgo observing run detections, we add the asymmetric-mass binary black hole GW190412, the high-confidence GW candidates S191204r, S200129m, and S200311bg to the sample of dark standard sirens analyzed. Our sample …
The LIGO/Virgo collaboration have by now detected the mergers of ten black hole binaries via the emission of gravitational radiation. The hypothesis that these black holes have formed during the cosmic QCD epoch and make up all of the cosmic dark matter, has been rejected by many authors reasoning that, among other constraints, primordial black hole (PBH) dark matter would lead to orders of magnitude larger merger rates than observed. We revisit the calculation of the present PBH merger rate. Solar mass PBHs form clusters at fairly high redshifts, which evaporate at lower redshifts. We conside…
The LIGO-Virgo Collaboration has so far detected around 90 black holes, some of which have masses larger than what were expected from the collapse of stars. The mass distribution of LIGO-Virgo black holes appears to have a peak at $\sim30M_{\odot}$ and two tails on the ends. By assuming that they all have a primordial origin, we analyze the GWTC-1 (O1\&O2) and GWTC-2 (O3a) datasets by performing maximum likelihood estimation on a broken power law mass function $f(m)$, with the result $f\propto m^{1.2}$ for $m<35M_{\odot}$ and $f\propto m^{-4}$ for $m>35M_{\odot}$. This appears to behave better…
The LIGO/Virgo gravitational wave events S190828j and S190828l were detected only 21 minutes apart, from nearby regions of sky, and with the same source classifications (binary black hole mergers). It is therefore natural to speculate that the two signals are actually strongly lensed images of the same merger. However, an estimate of the separation of the (unknown) positions of the two events requires them to be >10 deg apart, much wider than the arcsecond-scale separations that usually arise in extragalactic lensing. The large separation is much more consistent with two independent, unrelated…
The nonattractor evolution in ultra-slow-roll (USR) inflation results in the amplification of superhorizon curvature perturbations and then induces a strong and detectable stochastic gravitational wave background. In this letter, we search for such a stochastic gravitational wave background in data from the third LIGO-Virgo observing run and place constraints on the USR inflationary models. The $e$-folding number of the USR phase are constrained to be $ΔN \lesssim 2.9$ at the 95% confidence level and the power spectrum of curvature perturbations amplified during the USR phase is constrained to…
As a candidate bound for the Binary Black Hole (BBH) merger events detected by LIGO/Virgo, Primordial Black Holes (PBHs) provide a useful tool to investigate the primordial curvature perturbations on small scales. Using the GWTC-1 to GWTC-3 catalogs, under the scenario that PBHs originate from large primordial curvature perturbations on small scales during inflationary epoch, we for the first time reconstruct the power spectrum of primordial curvature perturbations on small scales. It is found that the value of the amplitude of the primordial power spectrum is enhanced to $\mathcal{O}(10^{-2})…
Ultralight bosons are promising dark matter candidates and can trigger superradiant instabilities of spinning black holes (BHs), resulting in long-lived rotating "bosonic clouds" around the BHs and dissipating their energy through the emission of monochromatic gravitational waves (GWs). We focus on the scalar bosons minimally coupled with both isolated stellar-origin BHs (SBH) and their binary merger remnants, and perform Bayesian data analysis to search for the stochastic GW background from all the unstable modes that can trigger the superradiant instabilities using the data of Advanced LIGO …
Parity violation is expected to generate an asymmetry between the amplitude of left and right-handed gravitational-wave modes which leads to a circularly polarized stochastic gravitational-wave background (SGWB). Due to the three independent baselines in the LIGO-Virgo network, we focus on the amplitude difference in strain power characterized by Stokes' parameters and do maximum-likelihood estimation to constrain the polarization degree of SGWB. Our results indicate that there is no evidence for the circularly polarized SGWB in the data. Furthermore, by modeling the SGWB as a power-law spectr…
We search for gravitational wave (GW) events from LIGO-Virgo's third run that may have been affected by gravitational lensing. Gravitational lensing delays the arrival of GWs, and alters their amplitude -- thus biasing the inferred progenitor masses. This would provide a physically well-understood interpretation of GW detections in the ''mass gap'' between neutron stars and black holes, as gravitationally lensed binary neutron star (BNS) mergers. We selected three GW detections in LIGO-Virgo's third run for which the probability of at least one of the constituent compact objects being in the m…
The LIGO and Virgo Interferometers have so far provided 11 gravitational-wave (GW) observations of black-hole binaries. Similar detections are bound to become very frequent in the near future. With the current and upcoming wealth of data, it is possible to confront specific formation models with observations. We investigate here whether current data are compatible with the hypothesis that LIGO/Virgo black holes are of primordial origin. We compute in detail the mass and spin distributions of primordial black holes (PBHs), their merger rates, the stochastic background of unresolved coalescences…
Gravitational waves can be focussed by the gravity of an intervening galaxy, just like light, thereby magnifying binary merging events in the far Universe. High magnification by galaxies is found to be responsible for the brightest sources detected in sky surveys, but the low angular resolution of LIGO/Virgo is insufficient to check this lensing possibility directly. Here we find that the first six binary black hole (BBH) merging events reported by LIGO/Virgo show clear evidence for lensing in the plane of observed mass and source distance. The four lowest frequency events follow an apparent l…
We study possibilities to explain the whole dark matter abundance by primordial black holes (PBHs) or to explain the merger rate of binary black holes estimated from the gravitational wave detections by LIGO/Virgo. We assume that the PBHs are originated in a radiation- or matter-dominated era from large primordial curvature perturbation generated by inflation. We take a simple model-independent approach considering inflation with large running spectral indices which are parametrized by $n_\text{s}, α_\text{s}$, and $β_\text{s}$ consistent with the observational bounds. The merger rate is fitte…
We briefly discuss a possible cosmological implication of the observed binary black hole mergings detected by LIGO-Virgo-Kagra collaboration (GWTC-3 catalogue) for the primordial black hole (PBH) formation in the early Universe. We show that the bumpy chirp mass distribution of the LVK BH+BH binaries can be fit with two distinct and almost equal populations: (1) astrophysical mergings from BH+BH formed in the modern Universe from evolution of massive binaries and (2) mergings of binary PBHs with initial log-normal mass distribution. We find that the PBH central mass ($M_c\simeq 30 M_\odot$) an…
We develop a detailed anisotropic model for the astrophysical gravitational-wave background, including binary mergers of two stellar-mass black holes, two neutron stars, or one of each, which are expected to be the strongest contributions in the LIGO-Virgo frequency band. The angular spectrum of the anisotropies, quantified by the $C_\ell$ components, is calculated using two complementary approaches: (i) a simple, closed-form analytical expression, and (ii) a detailed numerical study using an all-sky mock light cone galaxy catalogue from the Millennium simulation. The two approaches are in exc…
We discuss the effect of clustering for the determination of the merger rate of binary black holes in the LIGO mass range. While for a Poissonian initial distribution, and assuming isolated binaries, the allowed fraction of Primordial Black Holes (PBHs) to dark matter (DM) is a few percent, we show that this bound can be relaxed if PBHs are clustered. More precisely we show that for large clustering the merger rate can drop with increasing fraction of PBHs, introducing a degeneracy in the parameters of the theory consistent with a given present merger rate, and allowing all the DM to be in the…
Gravitational-wave astronomy offers not only new vistas into the realm of astrophysics, but it also opens an avenue for probing, for the first time, general relativity in its strong-field, nonlinear, and dynamical regime, where the theory's predictions manifest themselves in their full glory. We present a study of whether the gravitational wave events detected so far by the LIGO-Virgo scientific collaborations can be used to probe higher-curvature corrections to general relativity. In particular, we focus on two examples: Einstein-dilaton-Gauss-Bonnet and dynamical Chern-Simons gravity. We fin…
The detection of gravitational waves (GWs) provides a powerful tool to constrain the cosmological parameters. In this paper, we investigate the possibility of using GWs as standard sirens in testing the anisotropy of the universe. We consider the GW signals produced by the coalescence of binary black hole systems and simulate hundreds of GW events from the advanced Laser Interferometer Gravitational-Wave Observatory (LIGO) and Virgo. It is found that the anisotropy of the universe can be tightly constrained if the redshift of the GW source is precisely known. The anisotropic amplitude can be c…
The best-motivated scenario for a sizable primordial black hole (PBH) contribution to the LIGO/Virgo binary black hole mergers invokes the QCD phase transition, which naturally enhances the probability to form PBH with masses of stellar scale. We reconsider the expected mass function associated not only to the QCD phase transition proper, but also the following particle antiparticle annihilation processes, and analyse the constraints on this scenario from a number of observations: The specific pattern in cosmic microwave background (CMB) anisotropies induced by accretion onto PBHs, CMB spectra…
Aims. The detection and measurement of gravitational-waves from coalescing neutron-star binary systems is an important science goal for ground-based gravitational-wave detectors. In addition to emitting gravitational-waves at frequencies that span the most sensitive bands of the LIGO and Virgo detectors, these sources are also amongst the most likely to produce an electromagnetic counterpart to the gravitational-wave emission. A joint detection of the gravitational-wave and electromagnetic signals would provide a powerful new probe for astronomy. Methods. During the period between September 19…
Gravitational-wave observations of binary neutron star mergers and their electromagnetic counterparts provide an independent measurement of the Hubble constant, $H_0$, through the standard-sirens approach. Current methods of determining $H_0$, such as measurements from the early universe and the local distance ladder, are in tension with one another. If gravitational waves are to break this tension a thorough understanding of systematic uncertainty for gravitational-wave observations is required. To accurately estimate the properties of gravitational-wave signals measured by LIGO and Virgo, we…
