Speaker
Sergey Klimenko
(University of Florida)
Description
Most observed binary black hole (BBH) mergers belong to the stellar-mass BBH population produced by the collapse of isolated stars. A pair-instability supernova (PISN) mechanism prevents the formation of black holes from the stellar collapse with mass greater than 50 and less than 120 solar masses. Any BBH merger with a component black hole in the PISN mass gap is likely to originate from an alternative formation channel. In this talk, we discuss detections of the high-mass BBH systems and present the observational evidence for BBH events in the PISN gap, including the GW190521 event, which was firmly established as an outlier to the stellar-mass BBH population if the PI mass gap begins at or below 65 solar masses.
Primary author
Sergey Klimenko
(University of Florida)
