2023/05/18 by Viola De Renzis, De Renzis, Viola
Engineering · Physics and Astronomy · #Astrophysical Phenomena and Observations #FOS: Physical sciences #General Relativity and Quantum Cosmology (gr-qc) #High Energy Astrophysical Phenomena (astro-ph.HE) #Particle Accelerators and Free-Electron Lasers #Pulsars and Gravitational Waves Research
paper · pdf · doi:10.48550/arxiv.2305.10776
openalex publication_date 2023/05/18 · openalex created_date 2025/10/10 · openalex updated_date 2026/07/28
The relativistic spin-precession equations for black-hole binaries have four different equilibrium solutions that correspond to systems where the two individual black hole spins are either aligned or anti-aligned with the orbital angular momentum. Surprisingly, it was demonstrated that only three of these equilibrium solutions are stable. Binary systems in the up-down configuration, where the spin of the heavier (lighter) black hole is co- (counter-) aligned with the orbital angular momentum, might be unstable to small perturbations of the spin directions. After the onset of the up-down instability, that occurs after a specific critical orbital separation rUD+, the binary becomes unstable to spin precession leading to large misalignment of the spins. In this work, we present a Bayesian procedure based on the Savage-Dickey density ratio to test the up-down origin of gravitational-wave events. We apply this procedure to look for promising candidates among the events detected so far during the first three observing runs performed by LIGO/Virgo.