Importance of stable mass transfer and stellar winds for the formation of gravitational wave sources

Abstract: The large number of gravitational wave (GW) detections have revealed the properties of the merging black hole binary population, but how such systems are formed is still heavily debated. Understanding the imprint of stellar physics on the observable GW population will shed light on how we can use the gravitational wave data, along with other observations, to constrain the poorly understood evolution of massive binaries. We perform a parameter study on the classical isolated binary formation channel with the population synthesis code SeBa to investigate how sensitive the properties of the coalescing binary black hole population are on the uncertainties related to first phase of mass transfer and stellar winds. We vary five assumptions: 1 and 2) the mass transfer efficiency and the angular momentum loss during the first mass transfer phase, 3) the mass transfer stability criteria for giant donors with radiative envelopes, 4) the effective temperature at which an evolved star develops a deep convective envelope, and 5) the mass loss rates of stellar winds. We find that current uncertainties related to first phase of mass transfer have a huge impact on the relative importance of different dominant channels, while the observable demographics of GW sources are not significantly affected. Our varied parameters have a complex, interrelated effect on the population properties of GW sources. Therefore, inference of massive binary physics from GW data alone remains extremely challenging, given the large uncertainties in our current models.