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Constraint on the progenitor of a binary black hole merger using the population III star formation channel

Masaki Iwaya1,2,*, Tomoya Kinugawa3,4,5, and Hideyuki Tagoshi1

  • *Contact author: iwayam@cardiff.ac.uk
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Phys. Rev. D 114, 063065 – Published 30 September, 2026

DOI: https://doi.org/10.1103/yh4d-n6nk

Abstract

The observations of gravitational waves have revealed the existence of black holes (BHs) above 30M⊙. A variety of channels have been proposed as their origin, including the population III (Pop. III) star channel. In this channel, binary black holes (BBH) containing such massive BHs are naturally produced. In this paper, we examine the relative fractions of five formation channels that may contribute to the origins of BBHs: isolated binaries of either population I or population II stars, Pop. III isolated binaries, chemically homogeneous evolution, and the dynamical evolution in globular clusters and nuclear star clusters, using the LIGO-Virgo-KAGRA gravitational-wave transient catalog (GWTC-3) events through hierarchical Bayesian inference. We find that the branching fraction of the Pop. III BBH channel is 0.11−0.06+0.08 within our framework, consistent with the local merger rate density of the model of the Pop. III BBH channel we adopt. We also evaluate the contributions to the catalog using the selection effect of each formation channel and find that Pop. III BBHs could contribute at a non-negligible rate, though the adequacy of these ratios should be subject to ongoing discussion.

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Phys. Rev. D 114, 063065– Published 30 September, 2026
  • Received 22 January 2024
  • Accepted 16 June 2026
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