No evidence that the majority of black holes in binaries have zero spin

TL;DR

This study analyzes gravitational wave data to understand the spin properties of merging black holes, finding no need for a large non-spinning sub-population and evidence of significant spin-orbit misalignment.

Contribution

The paper employs multiple methods to reassess black hole spin distributions, challenging previous claims of a dominant non-spinning population and highlighting misalignment evidence.

Findings

No strong evidence for a large zero-spin sub-population.

Significant spin-orbit misalignment observed in many systems.

Less than 60% of binaries could have zero spins if such a sub-population exists.

Abstract

The spin properties of merging black holes observed with gravitational waves can offer novel information about the origin of these systems. The magnitude and orientations of black hole spins offer a record of binaries' evolutionary history, encoding information about massive stellar evolution and the astrophysical environments in which binary black holes are assembled. Recent analyses of the binary black hole population have yielded conflicting portraits of the black hole spin distribution. Some work suggests that black hole spins are small but non-zero and exhibit a wide range of misalignment angles relative to binaries' orbital angular momenta. Other work concludes that the majority of black holes are non-spinning while the remainder are rapidly rotating and primarily aligned with their orbits. We revisit these conflicting conclusions, employing a variety of complementary methods to measure the distribution of spin magnitudes and orientations among binary black hole mergers. We find that the existence of a sub-population of black hole with vanishing spins is not required by current data. Should such a sub-population exist, we conclude that it must contain $\lesssim 60\%$ of binaries. Additionally, we find evidence for significant spin-orbit misalignment among the binary black hole population, with some systems exhibiting misalignment angles greater than $90^{\circ}$, and see no evidence for an approximately spin-aligned sub-population.