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PreprintarXiv licencearXiv

Evidence for an accretion-driven subpopulation of black holes in GWTC-5.0

  • Zacharias Roupas
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Abstract

We report Bayesian evidence for a subpopulation of black holes, grown via accretion during the gaseous birth-stage of star clusters, in the cumulative GWTC-5.0 released by the LIGO-Virgo-KAGRA collaboration. This accretion channel predicts a saturating spin--mass relation, with low spins at low masses, rising continuously with mass through all intermediate spin values, to high spins at high masses. We test this prediction directly against the component spins of the catalogue. We single out 10 events with positive support and many others with weaker support across the whole component-mass range of the catalogue. We identify a preferred mass scale mt=20.7+11.6−1.2 M⊙ (90\% credibility) separating regimes with different accretion-mixture fractions, with ln B=5.5. Above this inferred scale, the evidence for an accretion-driven subpopulation is strongly concentrated, reaching a natural log Bayes factor of $16.6$ against the LVK fiducial spin population.

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Cite

BibTeXRIS
BibTeX
@misc{roupas2026evidence,
  title = {{Evidence for an accretion-driven subpopulation of black holes in GWTC-5.0}},
  author = {Zacharias Roupas},
  howpublished = {arXiv},
  year = {2026},
  month = aug,
  doi = {10.48550/arxiv.2608.29072},
  eprint = {2608.29072},
  archivePrefix = {arXiv},
  url = {https://arxiv.org/abs/2608.29072},
}
RIS
TY  - UNPB
TI  - Evidence for an accretion-driven subpopulation of black holes in GWTC-5.0
AU  - Zacharias Roupas
PY  - 2026
DA  - 2026/08/29
PB  - arXiv
DO  - 10.48550/arxiv.2608.29072
UR  - https://arxiv.org/abs/2608.29072
AB  - We report Bayesian evidence for a subpopulation of black holes, grown via accretion during the gaseous birth-stage of star clusters, in the cumulative GWTC-5.0 released by the LIGO-Virgo-KAGRA collaboration. This accretion channel predicts a saturating spin--mass relation, with low spins at low masses, rising continuously with mass through all intermediate spin values, to high spins at high masses. We test this prediction directly against the component spins of the catalogue. We single out 10 events with positive support and many others with weaker support across the whole component-mass range of the catalogue. We identify a preferred mass scale m^t=20.7^+11.6_−1.2 M_⊙ (90\% credibility) separating regimes with different accretion-mixture fractions, with ln B=5.5. Above this inferred scale, the evidence for an accretion-driven subpopulation is strongly concentrated, reaching a natural log Bayes factor of $16.6$ against the LVK fiducial spin population.
ER  -