The population of merging compact binaries inferred using gravitational waves through GWTC-3: Part 1, All Source Categories

With the release of the third gravitational wave transient catalog (GWTC-3) LIGO-Virgo-KAGRA has now reported many tens of compact binary mergers detected with gravitational waves that have properties consistent with binary black holes (BBH), binary neutron stars (BNS), and neutron star–black hole binaries (NSBH). Thanks to the growing sample size, we are now able to resolve more details in the BBH population, and begin to resolve the BNS and NSBH populations.

In this talk, we present our detections’ implications on all source categories. We report self-consistent per-source category rates, which account for ambiguity in some events’ source classifications. We put constraints on a potential mass gap between NS and BH. We also compare the inferred neutron star mass distribution to the galactic sample.