Probing the Statistical Relationship Between Binary Black Hole Mergers and Active Galactic Nuclei Hosts

Since 2015, LIGO/Virgo has detected many Binary Black Hole merger Gravitational Wave signals. Identifying the origins of these is key to discover more about these mergers. Rare host galaxies, like AGN, present a favorable environment for these events due to the possible dynamical interactions in their accretion disks. In this project we will probe the statistical relationship between BBH mergers and AGN hosts by analyzing the overlap in localization, as outlined in Bartos et. al. 2017. To do that, we developed a python-based framework that can get the volume overlap between AGN catalogs and LIGO/Virgo 90% probability density volume of BBH mergers. It can be used to establish the fraction of BBH GW detections that come from AGN and to inform real-time EM follow-up.