Characterizing the observation bias in gravitational-wave detections and finding structured population properties

Understand

The observed distributions of the source properties from gravitational-wave detections are biased due to the selection effects and detection criteria in the detections, analogous to the Malmquist bias.

• In this work, this observation bias is investigated through its fundamental statistical and physical origins.
• An efficient semi-analytical formulation for its estimation is derived which is as accurate as the standard method of numerical simulations, with only a millionth of the computational cost.
• Then, the estimated bias is used for unmodelled inferences on the binary black hole population.