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GWTC-4.0: Population Properties of Merging Compact Binaries
A. G. Abac et al 2026 The Astrophysical Journal Letters 1005 .
Caption: Figure 4.
Differential merger rate as a function of primary mass (evaluated at z = 0.2) of the BROKEN POWER LAW + 2 PEAKS model inferred with GWTC-4.0 compared to the same model applied to only GWTC-3.0 BBH events. The orange shaded region shows the 90% credible interval for GWTC-4.0 and the solid orange curve shows the posterior median, while the black dashed curves bound the 90% credible region for GWTC-3.0 and the solid black curve shows the posterior median. The inferred distribution is similar between catalogs, which highlights that the low-mass structure identified in GWTC-4.0 was present in GWTC-3.0. The inset figure shows the joint posterior of the broken power-law index parameters α1 and α2 for GWTC-3.0 (gray) and GWTC-4.0 (orange), with the contours showing the 5th, 50th, and 95th percentiles. The black dashed curve in the inset indicates where α1 = α2.
© 2026. The Author(s). Published by the American Astronomical Society.