Binary black hole mergers within the LIGO horizon: statistical properties and prospects for detecting electromagnetic counterparts

Abstract

Binary black holes (BBHs) are one of the endpoints of isolated binary evolution, and their mergers a leading channel for gravitational wave events. Here, using the evolutionary code \textsc{StarTrack}, we study the statistical properties of the BBH population from isolated binary evolution for a range of progenitor star metallicities and BH natal kicks. We compute the mass function and the distribution of the primary BH spin $a$ as a result of mass accretion during the binary evolution, and find that this is not an efficient process to spin up BHs, producing an increase by at most $a\sim$~0.2--0.3 for very low natal BH spins. We further compute the distribution of merger sites within the host galaxy, after tracking the motion of the binaries in the potentials of a massive spiral, a massive elliptical, and a dwarf galaxy. We find that a fraction of 70-90\% of mergers in massive galaxies and of 40-60\% in dwarfs (range mostly sensitive to the natal kicks) is expected to occur inside of their hosts. The number density distribution at the merger sites further allows us to estimate the broadband luminosity distribution that BBH mergers would produce, \textit{if} associated with a kinetic energy release in an outflow, {which, as a reference, we assume at the level inferred for the \textit{Fermi} GBM counterpart to GW150914, with the understanding that current limits from the O1 and O2 runs would require such emission to be produced within a jet of angular size within $\lesssim 50^\circ$.}