Our “popfisher” paper is finally out! (and now Viola can submit her PhD thesis). This is about next-generation (aka 3G) gravitational wave detectors. Those beasts will measure millions of black holes… and with so many of them who cares about each source individually. The important thing will be the population of objects, i.e. how those black holes are distributed as a whole. Measuring populations is an interesting but convoluted statistical problem. Here we implement a quick shortcut (the Fisher matrix) and show that yes, 3G detectors will be amazing… but more amazing for some things than for others.

Viola De Renzis, Francesco Iacovelli, Davide Gerosa, Michele  Mancarella, Costantino Pacilio.
arXiv:2410.17325 [astro-ph.HE].