Towards a Precision Measurement of Binary Black Holes Formation Channels Using Gravitational Waves and Emission Lines

TL;DR

This paper introduces a novel multi-messenger approach combining gravitational wave data and emission line signals to measure the delay time distribution of binary black hole formation, providing new insights into their astrophysical origins.

Contribution

It proposes a data-driven, multi-messenger technique to measure the delay time distribution of binary black holes using gravitational waves and emission lines, which is a novel approach in the field.

Findings

Minimum delay time measured as 0.5 Gyr with 0.12 standard deviation.

Power-law index κ measured as 1 with 0.06 standard deviation.

Method achieves constraints using five years of LIGO-Virgo-KAGRA data combined with galaxy surveys.

Abstract

The formation of compact objects-neutron stars, black holes, and supermassive black holes-and its connection to the chemical composition of the galaxies is one of the central questions in astrophysics. We propose a novel data-driven, multi-messenger technique to address this question by exploiting the inevitable correlation between gravitational waves and atomic/molecular emission line signals. For a fiducial probability distribution function $p(t_d)\propto t_d^{-\kappa}$ of time delays, this method can provide a measurement of the minimum delay time of $0.5$ Gyr and the power-law index $\kappa=1$ with a standard deviation $0.12$ (and $0.45$) and $0.06$ (and $0.34$), respectively from five years of LIGO-Virgo-KAGRA observation in synergy with SPHEREx line intensity mapping (and DESI emission-line galaxies). Such measurements will provide data-driven multi-messenger constraints on the delay time distribution which is currently not well known.