Exploring field-evolution and dynamical-capture coalescing binary black holes in GWTC-3

The continuously expanding sample of gravitational-wave observations is revealing the formation and evolutionary mechanism of merging compact binaries. Two primary channels, namely, isolated field binary evolution and dynamical capture, are widely accepted as potential producers of merging binary black holes (BBHs), which are distinguishable with the spin-orientation distributions of the BBHs. We investigate the two formation channels in GWTC-3, with a dedicated semi-parametric population model, i.e., a mixture of two sub-populations with different spin-orientation distributions (one is nearly-aligned and the other is nearly-isotropic). It turns out that the two sub-populations have different mass and mass-ratio distributions. The nearly-aligned sub-population, which is consistent with the isolated field formation channels, has a less preference for symmetric systems, and likely dominate the 10-solar-mass peak in the primary-mass function. While the isotropic sub-population shows a stronger preference for symmetric systems, and mainly contribute to the 35-solar-mass peak in the primary-mass function, consistent with the dynamical channels. Moreover, our results show that the purely isotropic-spin and the single well-aligned (i.e., the width of cosθ distribution σ_ t<0.5) scenario are ruled out (by a Bayes factor of lnℬ=5.2 and lnℬ=9.8).