Probing black hole formation through the observed population of binary black hole mergers

继2015年首次观测到引力波之后，我们现在已经观测到近100个来自黑洞和中子星合并的信号。这些观察使我们能够开始识别黑洞群体的特性，这些特性通常是意想不到的。例如，我们开始在观测到的黑洞质量分布中看到结构的出现，以及黑洞质量和自旋相关的暗示。这个博士项目涉及开发和改进从观测到的引力波信号推断黑洞种群特性的技术。2023年春天，LIGO、Virgo和KAGRA天文台将开始第四次观测，预计每周会有几次新的黑洞合并观测结果。这个博士项目将利用这些观测，更准确地提取宇宙中黑洞的天体物理分布。然后，它将研究如何更好地了解合并双星中黑洞的质量、质量比、自旋和离心率，从而探索双星黑洞的天体物理形成机制。在博士阶段即将结束时，这些天文台预计将开始第五次观测，每天对引力波信号进行观测。这将提供一个机会来测试任何已经做出的预测，并进一步提高我们对黑洞的天体物理学理解。

Following the first observation of gravitational waves in 2015, we have now observed close to 100 signals from merging black holes and neutron stars. These observations have enabled us to begin to identify, often unexpected, properties in the black hole population. For example, we are beginning to see the emergence of structure in the observed black hole mass distribution, as well as hints that black hole masses and spins are correlated.This PhD project involves developing and improving techniques to infer the properties of the black hole population from the observed gravitational wave signals. In spring 2023, the LIGO, Virgo and KAGRA observatories will begin their fourth observing run, which is expected to yield several new observations of black hole mergers each week. This PhD project will make use of these observations, to more accurately extract astrophysical distributions of black holes in the universe. It will then investigate how better understanding the mass, mass-ratio, spin and eccentricity of black holes in merging binaries can be used to probe the astrophysical formation mechanisms of black hole binaries. Towards the end of the PhD, the observatories are expected to begin their fifth observing run, with daily observations of gravitational wave signals. This will provide an opportunity to test any predictions that have been made and further improve our astrophysical understanding of black holes.