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General-relativistic precession in a black-hole binary

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arxiv 2112.11300 v4 pith:XNBUQ6G2 submitted 2021-12-21 gr-qc astro-ph.HE

classification gr-qcastro-ph.HE
keywords binaryprecessionbeenblackcurrentgeneral-relativisticgravitational-waveobservations
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The general-relativistic phenomenon of spin-induced orbital precession has not yet been observed in strong-field gravity. Gravitational-wave observations of binary black holes (BBHs) are prime candidates, since we expect the astrophysical binary population to contain precessing binaries. Imprints of precession have been investigated in several signals, but no definitive identification of orbital precession has been reported in any one of the 84 BBH observations to date by the Advanced LIGO and Virgo detectors. Here we report the measurement of strong-field precession in the LIGO-Virgo-Kagra (LVK) gravitational-wave signal GW200129. The binary's orbit precesses at a rate ten orders of magnitude faster than previous weak-field measurements from binary pulsars. We also find that the primary black hole is likely highly spinning. According to current binary population estimates a GW200129-like signal is extremely unlikely, and therefore presents a direct challenge to many current binary formation models.

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Cited by 5 Pith papers

Reviewed papers in the Pith corpus that reference this work. Sorted by Pith novelty score. Full citation record

  1. Joint inference for gravitational-wave signal and noise glitch: Method and application

    gr-qc 2026-07 accept novelty 6.0 of 10

    A bilby-based joint signal-glitch inference pipeline recovers unbiased parameters in simulations and shows GW200129 spin-precession evidence is sensitive to the waveform-plus-glitch-model combination.

  2. Establishing Compactness as a Population Observable in Gravitational-Wave Astronomy

    gr-qc 2026-06 unverdicted novelty 6.0 of 10

    Hierarchical analysis of GWTC-3 yields C_eff = 0.5^{+0.3}_{-0.1} consistent with black holes and limits low-compactness exotic binary merger rate to <0.7 Gpc^{-3} yr^{-1}.

  3. Compactness Inference in Gravitational-Wave Mergers with PhenomDECO: Catalog Benchmarks and Robustness Diagnostics

    gr-qc 2026-06 unverdicted novelty 6.0 of 10

    PhenomDECO analysis of GWTC-3 events finds all considered signals consistent with binary black holes once low-frequency noise effects are addressed via higher starting frequencies.

  4. On the use and interpretation of signal-model indistinguishability measures for gravitational-wave astronomy

    gr-qc 2025-06 accept novelty 5.0 of 10

    Using mismatch distances computed at best-fit parameters, per parameter, the paper predicts accurate bias SNRs for aligned-spin binary black hole measurements and derives waveform accuracy requirements for next-genera...

  5. PhenomXPNR: An improved gravitational wave model linking precessing inspirals and NR-calibrated merger-ringdown

    gr-qc 2025-07 conditional novelty 4.0 of 10

    PhenomXPNR is a fast frequency-domain gravitational-wave template for spinning black-hole mergers that combines post-Newtonian inspiral precession with numerical-relativity-calibrated merger and ringdown.

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