| Issue |
A&A
Volume 684, April 2024
|
|
|---|---|---|
| Article Number | A204 | |
| Number of page(s) | 15 | |
| Section | Extragalactic astronomy | |
| DOI | https://doi.org/10.1051/0004-6361/202348161 | |
| Published online | 25 April 2024 | |
Evidence of evolution of the black hole mass function with redshift⋆
1
Dipartimento di Fisica “E. Fermi”, Università di Pisa, Largo Bruno Pontecorvo 3, 56127 Pisa, Italy
e-mail: stefano.rinaldi@uni-heidelberg.de, walter.delpozzo@unipi.it
2
INFN, Sezione di Pisa, Largo Bruno Pontecorvo 3, 56127 Pisa, Italy
3
Institut für Theoretische Astrophysik, ZAH, Universität Heidelberg, Albert-Ueberle-Str. 2, 69120 Heidelberg, Germany
e-mail: mapelli@uni-heidelberg.de
4
IGFAE, University of Santiago de Compostela, Rúa de Xoaquín Díaz de Rábago, 15782 Santiago de Compostela, Spain
Received:
4
October
2023
Accepted:
10
February
2024
Aims. We investigate the observed distribution of the joint primary mass, mass ratio, and redshift of astrophysical black holes using the gravitational wave events detected by the LIGO-Virgo-KAGRA collaboration and included in the third gravitational wave transient catalogue.
Methods. We reconstructed this distribution using Bayesian non-parametric methods, which are data-driven models able to infer arbitrary probability densities under minimal mathematical assumptions.
Results. We find evidence that both the primary mass and mass-ratio distribution evolve with redshift: our analysis shows the presence of two distinct subpopulations in the primary mass−redshift plane, with the lighter population, ≲20 M⊙, disappearing at higher redshifts, z > 0.4. The mass-ratio distribution shows no support for symmetric binaries.
Conclusions. The observed population of coalescing binary black holes evolves with look-back time, suggesting a trend in metallicity with redshift and/or the presence of multiple redshift-dependent formation channels.
Key words: gravitation / gravitational waves / stars: black holes
Movies associated to Figs. 3 and 4 are available at https://www.aanda.org.
© The Authors 2024
Open Access article, published by EDP Sciences, under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0), which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited.
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