Illuminating Black Hole Binary Formation Channels with Spins in Advanced LIGO

TL;DR

This paper investigates how the spin orientations of black hole binaries can reveal their formation origins, distinguishing between isolated binary evolution and dynamical formation in star clusters, based on gravitational wave observations.

Contribution

It demonstrates that significant spin-orbit misalignment, especially anti-alignment, indicates dynamical formation, providing a new method to identify black hole binary origins.

Findings

Dynamical formation can produce black hole binaries with significant spin-orbit misalignment.

Heavy black hole binaries similar to GW150914 can only form with anti-aligned spins in the dynamical channel.

Future spin measurements can help determine the main formation channel of black hole binaries.

Abstract

The recent detections of the binary black hole mergers GW150914 and GW151226 have inaugurated the field of gravitational-wave astronomy. For the two main formation channels that have been proposed for these sources, isolated binary evolution in galactic fields and dynamical formation in dense star clusters, the predicted masses and merger rates overlap significantly, complicating any astrophysical claims that rely on measured masses alone. Here, we examine the distribution of spin- orbit misalignments expected for binaries from the field and from dense star clusters. Under standard assumptions for black-hole natal kicks, we find that black-hole binaries similar to GW150914 could be formed with significant spin-orbit misalignment only through dynamical processes. In particular, these heavy-black-hole binaries can only form with a significant spin-orbit anti-alignment in the dynamical channel. Our results suggest that future detections of merging black hole binaries with measurable spins will allow us to identify the main formation channel for these systems.