McFacts III: Compact binary mergers from AGN disks over an entire synthetic universe

Understand

The Active Galactic Nuclei (AGN) channel for the formation of binary black hole (BBH) mergers has been previously studied as a potential formation channel for the merging compact binaries observed by the LIGO/Virgo/KAGRA (LVK) scientific collaboration.

• The first two papers in this series explored the McFACTS code for the evolution of black hole orbits in AGN accretion disks for individual galaxy models and described the characteristics of predicted BBH populations in realizations of those models (such as the correlation between mass ratio and aligned spin).
• In this work, we explore the impact of the properties of AGN host galaxies and assume an AGN lifetime and cosmological model for the density of AGN in a universe like our own.
• By sampling from an inferred population of AGN, we marginalize over galaxy mass to predict a population of BBH mergers observable by modern ground-based gravitational wave observatories.