Misaligned Spin Merging Black Holes in Modified Gravity (MOG)

TL;DR

This paper explores how modified gravity (MOG) predicts misaligned black hole spins during mergers, aligning with gravitational wave observations that show low effective spin parameters.

Contribution

It demonstrates that MOG naturally explains the observed misaligned spins of merging black holes detected by aLIGO.

Findings

MOG predicts reduced effective spin parameter during black hole mergers.

MOG's predictions align with aLIGO's observed spin misalignments.

Enhanced gravity in MOG accounts for the spin distribution in coalescing black holes.

Abstract

A promising signature of coalescing black holes is their spin angular distribution. We consider the aLIGO collaboration gravitational wave measurements of the binary black hole spins and the predicted modified gravity (MOG) preference for misaligned spins of the coalescing black holes. In MOG, during the merger of two black holes, the enhanced strength of gravitation reduces the effective spin parameter $\chi_{\rm eff}\sim 0$ in agreement with the measured spin misalignment of the merging black holes observed in the gravitational wave detections by the aLIGO collaboration.