Natal kicks imparted to neutron stars and black holes at birth can be constrained using LIGO data. Kicks cause misalignments between the spins and the orbital angular momentum. Here we compare large banks of population synthesis simulations to LIGO data using hierarchical Bayesian statistics and show that (already with 4 events!) natal kicks are constrained from both above and below. Simulated binaries are produced merging Startrack evolutions to my precession code. More on this very soon…

Update: here it is!

Daniel Wysocki, Davide Gerosa, Richard O’Shaughnessy, Krzysztof Belczynski, Wojciech Gladysz, Emanuele Berti, Michael Kesden, Daniel Holz.
Physical Review D 97 (2018) 043014.
arXiv:1709.01943 [astro-ph.HE].