Structure and Skewness of the Effective Inspiral Spin Distribution of Binary Black Hole Mergers

The detection of gravitational waves has brought to light a population of binary black holes that merge within a Hubble time. Multiple formation channels can contribute to this population, making it difficult to definitively associate particular population features with underlying stellar physics. Black hole spins are considered an important discriminator between various channels, but they are less well measured than masses, making conclusive astrophysical statements using spins difficult thus far. In this paper, we consider the distribution of the effective inspiral spin χ eff —a quantity much better measured than individual component spins. We show that non-Gaussian features like skewness, asymmetry about zero, and multimodality can naturally arise in the χ eff distribution when multiple channels contribute to the population. Searching for such features, we find signs of skewness and asymmetry already in the current catalogs, but no statistically significant signs of bimodality. These features provide robust evidence for the presence of a subpopulation with spins preferentially aligned to the binary’s orbital angular momentum; and we conservatively estimate the fraction of this subpopulation to be at least 12%–17% (at 90% credibility). Our models do not find a sharp excess of nonspinning systems and instead find that at least ∼20% of the binaries have some degree of negative χ eff . The data also suggest that, if preferentially aligned mergers form a significant fraction of the population, they must have small spins.