On the distribution of stellar-sized black hole spins

TL;DR

This paper discusses how gravitational wave measurements can significantly improve our understanding of stellar-sized black hole spins, revealing insights into their formation channels and impact on gravitational wave detection.

Contribution

It analyzes the potential of gravitational wave observations to enhance black hole spin statistics and understand their origins, complementing limited X-ray measurements.

Findings

Gravitational wave detectors can vastly increase black hole spin data.

Black hole spins are influenced by their formation channels.

Insights into black hole origins can be gained from spin distributions.

Abstract

Black hole spin will have a large impact on searches for gravitational waves with advanced detectors. While only a few stellar mass black hole spins have been measured using X-ray techniques, gravitational wave detectors have the capacity to greatly increase the statistics of black hole spin measurements. We show what we might learn from these measurements and how the black hole spin values are influenced by their formation channels.