Measuring the properties of active galactic nuclei disks with gravitational waves

Understand

Active galactic nuclei (AGN) are promising environments for the assembly of merging binary black hole (BBH) systems.

• Interest in AGNs as nurseries for merging BBH is rising following the detection of gravitational waves from a BBH system from the purported pair-instability mass gap, most notably, GW190521.
• Active galactic nuclei have also been invoked to explain the formation of the high-mass-ratio system, GW190814.
• We draw on simulations of BBH systems in AGN to propose a phenomenological model for the distribution of black hole spins of merging binaries in AGN disks.