A new gravitational wave event reveals a binary black hole merger with total mass 190-265 solar masses, indicating black holes can form via gravitational-wave driven mergers beyond standard stellar channels.
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dynesty: A Dynamic Nested Sampling Package for Estimating Bayesian Posteriors and Evidences
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We present dynesty, a public, open-source, Python package to estimate Bayesian posteriors and evidences (marginal likelihoods) using Dynamic Nested Sampling. By adaptively allocating samples based on posterior structure, Dynamic Nested Sampling has the benefits of Markov Chain Monte Carlo algorithms that focus exclusively on posterior estimation while retaining Nested Sampling's ability to estimate evidences and sample from complex, multi-modal distributions. We provide an overview of Nested Sampling, its extension to Dynamic Nested Sampling, the algorithmic challenges involved, and the various approaches taken to solve them. We then examine dynesty's performance on a variety of toy problems along with several astronomical applications. We find in particular problems dynesty can provide substantial improvements in sampling efficiency compared to popular MCMC approaches in the astronomical literature. More detailed statistical results related to Nested Sampling are also included in the Appendix.
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representative citing papers
The first informative astrophysical calibration of gravitational-wave detectors is reported using GW240925 and GW250207.
GW241011 data shows consistency with Kerr black holes for both quadrupole and octupole moments and delivers the first observational bounds on spin-induced octupole deviations.
The central compact object 1E 1207.4-5209 emits pulsed radio waves at its 0.4-second spin period, revealing it as a faint radio pulsar.
A reference-frequency-independent detection statistic for eccentric binary mergers is introduced and applied to GW200105, yielding ln B ≤ 0.9 in favor of the eccentric aligned-spin model over the quasi-circular precessing model.
GreyRing model based on greybody factors reproduces numerical relativity ringdown signals with mismatches of order 10^{-6} and enables a new post-merger consistency test of general relativity applied to GW250114.
Presents a practical fully time-domain end-to-end likelihood for gravitational-wave inference with structured linear algebra and GPU acceleration.
LIGO and Virgo detected 39 compact binary coalescence events in O3a, including 13 new ones, with black hole binaries up to 150 solar masses and the first significantly asymmetric mass ratios.
UVJ colors saturate below log(sSFR) ~ -10.5; new UV/MIR color-color diagrams allow more efficient selection of galaxies with substantially lower ongoing star formation.
NIHAO simulations reproduce the Rd-r0 relation and its mild evolution from z=2 to z=0 through stellar feedback without dark matter modifications.
Neural network surrogate approximates precessing compact binary gravitational waveforms up to 1000x faster than the base EOB model with validated accuracy.
pyEFPEHM extends prior PN models to include higher-order quasi-circular phasing, generalized precession solutions, and eccentric corrections up to 1PN in selected multipoles for eccentric precessing binaries with matter effects.
Unmodeled point-mass lensing produces a spurious nonzero graviton mass posterior in GW231123 that vanishes when lensing is included in the analysis.
Maximum-likelihood-based posterior predictive checks detect model misspecification better than event-level versions for uncertain spin tilts, but current detector sensitivity limits their power; the Gaussian Component Spins model underpredicts high spin magnitudes and overpredicts anti-aligned tilts
Simulations show a 40-50 solar-mass black-hole cutoff is not guaranteed to be confidently recovered from GWTC-4-like catalogs, spurious detections are unlikely, and O4 data would reduce cutoff-mass uncertainty by at least 20 percent while yielding only a lower bound on the carbon-alpha reaction rate
GW250114 data constrains GR deviations in merger amplitude to 10% and frequency to 4% at 90% CL, with first bounds on the (4,4) mode frequency at 6%.
GWTC-4 data show a transition to nearly all hierarchical mergers above 46 solar masses, with the hierarchical rate peaking at 15.7 solar masses, indicating mass-dependent substructure in black hole spins.
Semi-analytic waveform model for scalar environments around black hole binaries is validated against numerical relativity and applied to LIGO-Virgo-KAGRA data to obtain upper limits on scalar densities with tentative evidence in GW190728.
GW250114 data confirm the remnant is consistent with a Kerr black hole and bound the dominant quadrupolar mode frequency to within a few percent of the GR prediction, with constraints tighter than prior multi-event catalogs.
Bayesian inference on LVK O1-O3 events with eccentric aligned-spin waveforms yields log10 Bayes factors of 1.77-4.75 favoring eccentricity for GW200129, GW190701 and GW200208_22, and >99.5% probability that at least one of 57 events is eccentric under an astrophysically motivated rate prior.
JADES DR5 delivers a public catalog of Bayesian-inferred stellar masses, SFRs, SFHs, dust, metallicities, and AGN contributions for ~500k galaxies via Prospector with an evolving SFMS prior.
An interacting dark sector model with Yukawa-coupled fermionic DM and Born-Infeld tachyonic scalar produces recent double phantom crossing in effective w_DE, fits DESI+Planck+SN data, and predicts ultralight DM mass of order 1.9e-3 eV under naturalness assumptions.
LIGO-Virgo-KAGRA O4a data yields the strongest constraints on primordial black hole abundance for 0.6-100 solar masses, with resolvable mergers dominating the limits and no compelling evidence for a PBH contribution in joint fits with astrophysical black holes.
LRDs require Compton-thick gas at moderate metallicity plus high accretion rates producing weak X-rays to explain their non-detection, implying they are not chemically pristine.
citing papers explorer
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GW231123: a Binary Black Hole Merger with Total Mass 190-265 $M_{\odot}$
A new gravitational wave event reveals a binary black hole merger with total mass 190-265 solar masses, indicating black holes can form via gravitational-wave driven mergers beyond standard stellar channels.
-
GW240925 and GW250207: Astrophysical Calibration of Gravitational-wave Detectors
The first informative astrophysical calibration of gravitational-wave detectors is reported using GW240925 and GW250207.
-
Testing the Kerr hypothesis beyond the quadrupole with GW241011
GW241011 data shows consistency with Kerr black holes for both quadrupole and octupole moments and delivers the first observational bounds on spin-induced octupole deviations.
-
Pulsed radio emission from a Central Compact Object
The central compact object 1E 1207.4-5209 emits pulsed radio waves at its 0.4-second spin period, revealing it as a faint radio pulsar.
-
A universal framework to identify eccentric binary mergers: GW200105 case study
A reference-frequency-independent detection statistic for eccentric binary mergers is introduced and applied to GW200105, yielding ln B ≤ 0.9 in favor of the eccentric aligned-spin model over the quasi-circular precessing model.
-
Novel ringdown tests of general relativity with black hole greybody factors
GreyRing model based on greybody factors reproduces numerical relativity ringdown signals with mismatches of order 10^{-6} and enables a new post-merger consistency test of general relativity applied to GW250114.
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Accelerated Time-domain Analysis for Gravitational Wave Astronomy
Presents a practical fully time-domain end-to-end likelihood for gravitational-wave inference with structured linear algebra and GPU acceleration.
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GWTC-2: Compact Binary Coalescences Observed by LIGO and Virgo During the First Half of the Third Observing Run
LIGO and Virgo detected 39 compact binary coalescence events in O3a, including 13 new ones, with black hole binaries up to 150 solar masses and the first significantly asymmetric mass ratios.
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Beyond UVJ: More Efficient Selection of Quiescent Galaxies With UV / Mid-IR Fluxes
UVJ colors saturate below log(sSFR) ~ -10.5; new UV/MIR color-color diagrams allow more efficient selection of galaxies with substantially lower ongoing star formation.
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Feedback driven interactions between dark and luminous matter to explain tight galaxy scaling relations
NIHAO simulations reproduce the Rd-r0 relation and its mild evolution from z=2 to z=0 through stellar feedback without dark matter modifications.
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Fast neural network surrogate for multimodal effective-one-body gravitational waveforms from generically precessing compact binaries
Neural network surrogate approximates precessing compact binary gravitational waveforms up to 1000x faster than the base EOB model with validated accuracy.
-
Post-Newtonian inspiral waveform model for eccentric precessing binaries with higher-order modes and matter effects
pyEFPEHM extends prior PN models to include higher-order quasi-circular phasing, generalized precession solutions, and eccentric corrections up to 1PN in selected multipoles for eccentric precessing binaries with matter effects.
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GW231123: False Massive Graviton Signatures from Unmodeled Point-Mass Lensing
Unmodeled point-mass lensing produces a spurious nonzero graviton mass posterior in GW231123 that vanishes when lensing is included in the analysis.
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Posterior Predictive Checks for Gravitational-wave Populations: Limitations and Improvements
Maximum-likelihood-based posterior predictive checks detect model misspecification better than event-level versions for uncertain spin tilts, but current detector sensitivity limits their power; the Gaussian Component Spins model underpredicts high spin magnitudes and overpredicts anti-aligned tilts
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Measurement prospects for the pair-instability mass cutoff with gravitational waves
Simulations show a 40-50 solar-mass black-hole cutoff is not guaranteed to be confidently recovered from GWTC-4-like catalogs, spurious detections are unlikely, and O4 data would reduce cutoff-mass uncertainty by at least 20 percent while yielding only a lower bound on the carbon-alpha reaction rate
-
Plunge-Merger-Ringdown Tests of General Relativity with GW250114
GW250114 data constrains GR deviations in merger amplitude to 10% and frequency to 4% at 90% CL, with first bounds on the (4,4) mode frequency at 6%.
-
Signatures of a subpopulation of hierarchical mergers in the GWTC-4 gravitational-wave dataset
GWTC-4 data show a transition to nearly all hierarchical mergers above 46 solar masses, with the hierarchical rate peaking at 15.7 solar masses, indicating mass-dependent substructure in black hole spins.
-
Scalar fields around black hole binaries in LIGO-Virgo-KAGRA
Semi-analytic waveform model for scalar environments around black hole binaries is validated against numerical relativity and applied to LIGO-Virgo-KAGRA data to obtain upper limits on scalar densities with tentative evidence in GW190728.
-
Black Hole Spectroscopy and Tests of General Relativity with GW250114
GW250114 data confirm the remnant is consistent with a Kerr black hole and bound the dominant quadrupolar mode frequency to within a few percent of the GR prediction, with constraints tighter than prior multi-event catalogs.
-
Evidence for eccentricity in the population of binary black holes observed by LIGO-Virgo-KAGRA
Bayesian inference on LVK O1-O3 events with eccentric aligned-spin waveforms yields log10 Bayes factors of 1.77-4.75 favoring eccentricity for GW200129, GW190701 and GW200208_22, and >99.5% probability that at least one of 57 events is eccentric under an astrophysically motivated rate prior.
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JWST Advanced Deep Extragalactic Survey (JADES) Data Release 5: stellar population catalogue for galaxies in GOODS-N and GOODS-S
JADES DR5 delivers a public catalog of Bayesian-inferred stellar masses, SFRs, SFHs, dust, metallicities, and AGN contributions for ~500k galaxies via Prospector with an evolving SFMS prior.
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Interacting Dark Sector field theory with phantom crossing
An interacting dark sector model with Yukawa-coupled fermionic DM and Born-Infeld tachyonic scalar produces recent double phantom crossing in effective w_DE, fits DESI+Planck+SN data, and predicts ultralight DM mass of order 1.9e-3 eV under naturalness assumptions.
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Constraints on primordial black holes from the first part of LIGO-Virgo-KAGRA fourth observing run
LIGO-Virgo-KAGRA O4a data yields the strongest constraints on primordial black hole abundance for 0.6-100 solar masses, with resolvable mergers dominating the limits and no compelling evidence for a PBH contribution in joint fits with astrophysical black holes.
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On the quenching of LRD X-ray emission by both Compton-thick gas and high accretion rates
LRDs require Compton-thick gas at moderate metallicity plus high accretion rates producing weak X-rays to explain their non-detection, implying they are not chemically pristine.
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The Impact of Spin Priors on Parameterized Tests of General Relativity
Spin prior choices propagate into tests of GR via the 1.5PN deviation parameter δφ̂3 in a non-trivial, event-dependent way, with stronger effects for short-inspiral events and partial degeneracy with χ_eff when the deviation is included.
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Do equation of state parametrizations of dark energy faithfully capture the dynamics of the late universe?
Node-based reconstruction of cosmic expansion prefers stronger deceleration at z≈1.7 than smooth DE EoS parametrizations, isolating z~1.5-2 as a window where the latter may compress localized kinematic features permitted by current data.
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Revisiting the Matter Creation Process: Observational Constraints on Gravitationally Induced Dark Energy and the Hubble Tension
Gravitationally induced particle creation models fit cosmological data as well as ΛCDM and reduce the Hubble tension from 4.3σ to 2.4–3σ.
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Gravitational-wave parameter estimation to the Moon and back: massive binaries and the case of GW231123
LGWA could observe more than one third of known binary black hole events, detect ~90 mergers per year, and measure chirp mass better than third-generation detectors for massive systems.
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Biased parameter inference of eccentric, spin-precessing binary black holes
Eccentric BBH signals recovered with quasi-circular precessing models show biases in chirp mass and χ_p; Bayes factors favor eccentric aligned-spin models when both eccentricity and precession are present.
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Neural Post-Einsteinian Test of General Relativity with the Third Gravitational-Wave Transient Catalog
Neural post-Einsteinian analysis of GWTC-3 finds no GR violation and sets constraints covering both post-Newtonian and beyond-post-Newtonian deviations in a single theory-agnostic setup.
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GW250114: testing Hawking's area law and the Kerr nature of black holes
GW250114 data confirm the remnant black hole ringdown frequencies lie within 30% of Kerr predictions and that the final horizon area is larger than the sum of the progenitors' areas to high credibility.
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Assessment of normalizing flows for parameter estimation on time-frequency representations of gravitational-wave data
GP15 maps BBH spectrograms to parameter posteriors via residual networks and normalizing flows, producing results consistent with LVK analyses on GWTC-2.1 and GWTC-3 events while running in seconds.
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Tests of General Relativity with GW230529: a neutron star merging with a lower mass-gap compact object
Parameterized inspiral tests on GW230529 find consistency with GR, with |δφ̂_{-2}| ≲ 8×10^{-5} and ℓ_GB ≲ 0.51 M_⊙ in ESGB theories.
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Determination of the best dark matter profile for the Milky Way with Gaia DR3 using Bayesian Model Comparison
Bayesian comparison of Gaia DR3 rotation curves favors the Einasto dark matter profile over NFW, prefers cored over cuspy profiles, and finds MOND variants provide poorer fits than the best dark matter models.
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Polarization Birefringence and Waveform Systematics in GW231123
Analysis of GW231123 with IMRPhenomXPHM, IMRPhenomXO4a and NRSur7dq4 yields no waveform-independent evidence for polarization birefringence, with 90% upper limits on the derived coefficient of 0.378, 0.097 and 0.273 respectively.
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Closing the knowledge gap in semileptonic $B\rightarrow X_c\ell\nu$ decays
The unmeasured fraction of inclusive semileptonic B to charm decays is dominated by final states without D mesons, likely from baryons and Ds mesons.
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Gravitational-wave astronomy requires population-informed parameter estimation
Population-informed hierarchical parameter estimation is required for unbiased astrophysical interpretation of gravitational-wave events rather than using standard individual posteriors with reference priors.
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Basilic: An end-to-end pipeline for Bayesian burst inference and model classification in gravitational-wave data
Basilic is an end-to-end Bayesian pipeline for gravitational-wave burst inference and model classification, with a case study showing signal degeneracies between binary black hole mergers and cosmic strings.
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Impact of the SNe Ia Magnitude Transition at 20 Mpc on Cosmological Parameter Estimation
A 0.19 mag step in supernova absolute magnitude at 20 Mpc improves data fit and increases the Hubble constant by 2% while leaving matter density and dark energy parameters stable.
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GW190711_030756 and GW200114_020818: astrophysical interpretation of two asymmetric binary black hole mergers in the IAS catalog
Two asymmetric BBH mergers are characterized with mass ratios 0.35 and ≤0.20; one shows high spins, negative χ_eff, and strong precession, suggesting an emerging population of massive rapidly spinning systems.
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Accelerating parameter estimation for parameterized tests of general relativity with gravitational-wave observations
Relative binning accelerates TIGER parameterized GR tests by factors of 10-100 while recovering unbiased posteriors on simulated signals and real events like GW150914.
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GWTC-3: Compact Binary Coalescences Observed by LIGO and Virgo During the Second Part of the Third Observing Run
GWTC-3 catalogs 90 compact binary coalescence events with p_astro > 0.5 from LIGO and Virgo's first three observing runs, including the first confident neutron star-black hole binaries.
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GWTC-2.1: Deep Extended Catalog of Compact Binary Coalescences Observed by LIGO and Virgo During the First Half of the Third Observing Run
GWTC-2.1 adds eight new high-significance compact binary coalescence events to the prior catalog, extending the observed black hole mass range and including candidates inside the pair-instability mass gap.
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Improved Constraints on Non-Kerr Deviations from Binary Black Hole Inspirals Using GWTC-4 Data
Bayesian constraints from GWTC-4 binary black hole inspirals show Johannsen metric deformation parameters α13 and ε3 consistent with zero, supporting the Kerr hypothesis.
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Bayesian inference for compact binary coalescences with BILBY: Validation and application to the first LIGO--Virgo gravitational-wave transient catalogue
BILBY is validated on simulated compact binary signals and reproduces the eleven GWTC-1 results with configuration and output files provided for reproduction.