Distinguishing binary black hole precessional morphologies with gravitational wave observations

The precessional motion of binary black holes can be classified into one of three morphologies, based on the evolution of the angle between the components of the spins in the orbital plane: Circulating, librating around 0, and librating around $\pi$. These different morphologies can be related to the binary's formation channel and are imprinted in the binary's gravitational wave signal. In this paper, we develop a Bayesian model selection method to determine the preferred spin morphology of a detected binary black hole. The method involves a fast calculation of the morphology which allows us to restrict to a specific morphology in the Bayesian stochastic sampling. We investigate the prospects for distinguishing between the different morphologies using gravitational waves in the Advanced LIGO/Advanced Virgo network with their plus-era sensitivities. For this, we consider fiducial high- and low-mass binaries having different spin magnitudes and signal-to-noise ratios (SNRs). We find that in the cases with high spin and high SNR, the true morphology is strongly favored with $\log_{10}$ Bayes factors $\gtrsim 4$ compared to both alternative morphologies when the binary's parameters are not close to the boundary between morphologies. However, when the binary parameters are close to the boundary between morphologies, only one alternative morphology is strongly disfavored. In the low-spin, high-SNR cases, the true morphology is still favored with a $\log_{10}$ Bayes factor $\sim 2$ compared to one alternative morphology. We also consider the gravitational wave signal from GW200129_065458 that has some evidence for precession (modulo data quality issues) and find that there is no preference for a specific morphology. Our method for restricting the prior to a given morphology is publicly available through an easy-to-use Python package called bbh_spin_morphology_prior. (Abridged)Comment: 14 pages, 5 figures, version accepted by PR

Distinguishing binary black hole precessional morphologies with gravitational wave observations

The precessional motion of binary black holes can be classified into one of three morphologies, based on the evolution of the angle between the components of the spins in the orbital plane: Circulating, librating around 0, and librating around π. These different morphologies can be related to the binary’s formation channel and are imprinted in the binary’s gravitational wave signal. In this paper, we develop a Bayesian model selection method to determine the preferred spin morphology of a detected binary black hole. The method involves a fast calculation of the morphology which allows us to restrict to a specific morphology in the Bayesian stochastic sampling. We investigate the prospects for distinguishing between the different morphologies using gravitational waves in the Advanced LIGO/Advanced Virgo network with their plus-era sensitivities. For this, we consider fiducial high- and low-mass binaries having different spin magnitudes and signal-to-noise ratios (SNRs). We find that in the cases with high spin and high SNR, the true morphology is strongly favored with log10 Bayes factors ≳ 4 compared to both alternative morphologies when the binary’s parameters are not close to the boundary between morphologies. However, when the binary parameters are close to the boundary between morphologies, only one alternative morphology is strongly disfavored. In the low-spin, high-SNR cases, the true morphology is still favored with a log10 Bayes factor ∼ 2 compared to one alternative morphology, while in the low-SNR cases the log10 Bayes factors are at most ∼1 for many binaries. We also consider the gravitational wave signal from GW200129_065458 that has some evidence for precession (modulo data quality issues) and find that there is no preference for a specific morphology. Our method for restricting the prior to a given morphology is publicly available through an easy-to-use python package called bbh_spin_morphology_prior

The source ambiguity problem: Distinguishing the effects of grammar and processing on acceptability judgments

Judgments of linguistic unacceptability may theoretically arise from either grammatical deviance or significant processing difficulty. Acceptability data are thus naturally ambiguous in theories that explicitly distinguish formal and functional constraints. Here, we consider this source ambiguity problem in the context of Superiority effects: the dispreference for ordering a wh-phrase in front of a syntactically “superior” wh-phrase in multiple wh-questions, e.g., What did who buy? More specifically, we consider the acceptability contrast between such examples and so-called D-linked examples, e.g., Which toys did which parents buy? Evidence from acceptability and self-paced reading experiments demonstrates that (i) judgments and processing times for Superiority violations vary in parallel, as determined by the kind of wh-phrases they contain, (ii) judgments increase with exposure, while processing times decrease, (iii) reading times are highly predictive of acceptability judgments for the same items, and (iv) the effects of the complexity of the wh-phrases combine in both acceptability judgments and reading times. This evidence supports the conclusion that D-linking effects are likely reducible to independently motivated cognitive mechanisms whose effects emerge in a wide range of sentence contexts. This in turn suggests that Superiority effects, in general, may owe their character to differential processing difficulty

Gravitational waves from single neutron stars: an advanced detector era survey

With the doors beginning to swing open on the new gravitational wave astronomy, this review provides an up-to-date survey of the most important physical mechanisms that could lead to emission of potentially detectable gravitational radiation from isolated and accreting neutron stars. In particular we discuss the gravitational wave-driven instability and asteroseismology formalism of the f- and r-modes, the different ways that a neutron star could form and sustain a non-axisymmetric quadrupolar "mountain" deformation, the excitation of oscillations during magnetar flares and the possible gravitational wave signature of pulsar glitches. We focus on progress made in the recent years in each topic, make a fresh assessment of the gravitational wave detectability of each mechanism and, finally, highlight key problems and desiderata for future work.Comment: 39 pages, 12 figures, 2 tables. Chapter of the book "Physics and Astrophysics of Neutron Stars", NewCompStar COST Action 1304. Minor corrections to match published versio

Swift follow-up observations of candidate gravitational-wave transient events

We present the first multi-wavelength follow-up observations of two candidate gravitational-wave (GW) transient events recorded by LIGO and Virgo in their 2009-2010 science run. The events were selected with low latency by the network of GW detectors and their candidate sky locations were observed by the Swift observatory. Image transient detection was used to analyze the collected electromagnetic data, which were found to be consistent with background. Off-line analysis of the GW data alone has also established that the selected GW events show no evidence of an astrophysical origin; one of them is consistent with background and the other one was a test, part of a "blind injection challenge". With this work we demonstrate the feasibility of rapid follow-ups of GW transients and establish the sensitivity improvement joint electromagnetic and GW observations could bring. This is a first step toward an electromagnetic follow-up program in the regime of routine detections with the advanced GW instruments expected within this decade. In that regime multi-wavelength observations will play a significant role in completing the astrophysical identification of GW sources. We present the methods and results from this first combined analysis and discuss its implications in terms of sensitivity for the present and future instruments.Comment: Submitted for publication 2012 May 25, accepted 2012 October 25, published 2012 November 21, in ApJS, 203, 28 ( http://stacks.iop.org/0067-0049/203/28 ); 14 pages, 3 figures, 6 tables; LIGO-P1100038; Science summary at http://www.ligo.org/science/Publication-S6LVSwift/index.php ; Public access area to figures, tables at https://dcc.ligo.org/cgi-bin/DocDB/ShowDocument?docid=p110003

Implementation and testing of the first prompt search for gravitational wave transients with electromagnetic counterparts

Aims. A transient astrophysical event observed in both gravitational wave (GW) and electromagnetic (EM) channels would yield rich scientific rewards. A first program initiating EM follow-ups to possible transient GW events has been developed and exercised by the LIGO and Virgo community in association with several partners. In this paper, we describe and evaluate the methods used to promptly identify and localize GW event candidates and to request images of targeted sky locations. Methods. During two observing periods (Dec 17 2009 to Jan 8 2010 and Sep 2 to Oct 20 2010), a low-latency analysis pipeline was used to identify GW event candidates and to reconstruct maps of possible sky locations. A catalog of nearby galaxies and Milky Way globular clusters was used to select the most promising sky positions to be imaged, and this directional information was delivered to EM observatories with time lags of about thirty minutes. A Monte Carlo simulation has been used to evaluate the low-latency GW pipeline's ability to reconstruct source positions correctly. Results. For signals near the detection threshold, our low-latency algorithms often localized simulated GW burst signals to tens of square degrees, while neutron star/neutron star inspirals and neutron star/black hole inspirals were localized to a few hundred square degrees. Localization precision improves for moderately stronger signals. The correct sky location of signals well above threshold and originating from nearby galaxies may be observed with ~50% or better probability with a few pointings of wide-field telescopes.Comment: 17 pages. This version (v2) includes two tables and 1 section not included in v1. Accepted for publication in Astronomy & Astrophysic

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Article discussing research on L- and M-shell x-ray production cross sections of Nd, Gd, Ho, Yb, Au, and Pb by 25-MeV carbon and 32-MeV oxygen ions

Teaching the science of learning

The science of learning has made a considerable contribution to our understanding of effective teaching and learning strategies. However, few instructors outside of the field are privy to this research. In this Tutorial Review, we focus on six specific cognitive strategies that have received robust support from decades of research: spaced practice, interleaving, retrieval practice, elaboration, concrete examples, and dual coding. We describe the basic research behind each strategy and relevant applied research, present examples of existing and suggested implementation, and make recommendations for further research that would broaden the reach of these strategies

Gene-rich UV sex chromosomes harbor conserved regulators of sexual development

Nonrecombining sex chromosomes, like the mammalian Y, often lose genes and accumulate transposable elements, a process termed degeneration. The correlation between suppressed recombination and degeneration is clear in animal XY systems, but the absence of recombination is confounded with other asymmetries between the X and Y. In contrast, UV sex chromosomes, like those found in bryophytes, experience symmetrical population genetic conditions. Here, we generate nearly gapless female and male chromosome-scale reference genomes of the moss Ceratodon purpureus to test for degeneration in the bryophyte UV sex chromosomes. We show that the moss sex chromosomes evolved over 300 million years ago and expanded via two chromosomal fusions. Although the sex chromosomes exhibit weaker purifying selection than autosomes, we find that suppressed recombination alone is insufficient to drive degeneration. Instead, the U and V sex chromosomes harbor thousands of broadly expressed genes, including numerous key regulators of sexual development across land plants