Evidence of the pair instability gap from black hole masses
Fuente:
arXiv
Salvato in:
| Autori principali: | , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , |
|---|---|
| Natura: | Preprint |
| Pubblicazione: |
2025
|
| Soggetti: | |
| Accesso online: | |
| Tags: |
Aggiungi Tag
Nessun Tag, puoi essere il primo ad aggiungerne!!
|
| _version_ | 1866918494296080384 |
|---|---|
| author | Tong, Hui Fishbach, Maya Thrane, Eric Mould, Matthew Callister, Thomas A. Farah, Amanda Guttman, Nir Banagiri, Sharan Beltran-Martinez, Daniel Farr, Ben Galaudage, Shanika Godfrey, Jaxen Heinzel, Jack Kalomenopoulos, Marios Miller, Simona J. Vijaykumar, Aditya |
| author_facet | Tong, Hui Fishbach, Maya Thrane, Eric Mould, Matthew Callister, Thomas A. Farah, Amanda Guttman, Nir Banagiri, Sharan Beltran-Martinez, Daniel Farr, Ben Galaudage, Shanika Godfrey, Jaxen Heinzel, Jack Kalomenopoulos, Marios Miller, Simona J. Vijaykumar, Aditya |
| contents | Stellar theory predicts a forbidden range of black-hole masses between ${\sim}50$--$130\,M_\odot$ due to pair-instability supernovae, but evidence for such a gap in the mass distribution from gravitational-wave astronomy has proved elusive. Early hints of a cutoff in black-hole masses at ${\sim} 45\,M_\odot$ disappeared with the subsequent discovery of more massive binary black holes. Here, we report evidence of the pair-instability gap in LIGO--Virgo--KAGRA's fourth gravitational wave transient catalog (GWTC-4), with a lower boundary of $44_{-4}^{+5} M_\odot$ (90\% credibility). While the gap is not present in the distribution of \textit{primary} masses $m_1$ (the bigger of the two black holes in a binary system), it appears unambiguously in the distribution of \textit{secondary} masses $m_2$, where $m_2 \leq m_1$. The location of the gap lines up well with a previously identified transition in the binary black-hole spin distribution; binaries with primary components in the gap tend to spin more rapidly than those below the gap. We interpret these findings as evidence for a subpopulation of hierarchical mergers: binaries where the primary component is the product of a previous black-hole merger and thus populates the gap. Our measurement of the location of the pair-instability gap constrains the $S$-factor for $^{12}\rm{C}(α,γ)^{16}\rm{O}$ at 300keV to $260_{-108}^{+190}$ keV barns. |
| format | Preprint |
| id |
arxiv_https___arxiv_org_abs_2509_04151 |
| institution | arXiv |
| publishDate | 2025 |
| record_format | arxiv |
| spellingShingle | Evidence of the pair instability gap from black hole masses Tong, Hui Fishbach, Maya Thrane, Eric Mould, Matthew Callister, Thomas A. Farah, Amanda Guttman, Nir Banagiri, Sharan Beltran-Martinez, Daniel Farr, Ben Galaudage, Shanika Godfrey, Jaxen Heinzel, Jack Kalomenopoulos, Marios Miller, Simona J. Vijaykumar, Aditya High Energy Astrophysical Phenomena Stellar theory predicts a forbidden range of black-hole masses between ${\sim}50$--$130\,M_\odot$ due to pair-instability supernovae, but evidence for such a gap in the mass distribution from gravitational-wave astronomy has proved elusive. Early hints of a cutoff in black-hole masses at ${\sim} 45\,M_\odot$ disappeared with the subsequent discovery of more massive binary black holes. Here, we report evidence of the pair-instability gap in LIGO--Virgo--KAGRA's fourth gravitational wave transient catalog (GWTC-4), with a lower boundary of $44_{-4}^{+5} M_\odot$ (90\% credibility). While the gap is not present in the distribution of \textit{primary} masses $m_1$ (the bigger of the two black holes in a binary system), it appears unambiguously in the distribution of \textit{secondary} masses $m_2$, where $m_2 \leq m_1$. The location of the gap lines up well with a previously identified transition in the binary black-hole spin distribution; binaries with primary components in the gap tend to spin more rapidly than those below the gap. We interpret these findings as evidence for a subpopulation of hierarchical mergers: binaries where the primary component is the product of a previous black-hole merger and thus populates the gap. Our measurement of the location of the pair-instability gap constrains the $S$-factor for $^{12}\rm{C}(α,γ)^{16}\rm{O}$ at 300keV to $260_{-108}^{+190}$ keV barns. |
| title | Evidence of the pair instability gap from black hole masses |
| topic | High Energy Astrophysical Phenomena |
| url | https://arxiv.org/abs/2509.04151 |