Are black hole spins truly near-zero?

Feb 13, 2026·
Vaishak Prasad
,
B. S. Sathyaprakash
· 1 min read
Abstract
This work revisits spin-magnitude inference for binary black holes and shows that commonly used uniform-in-magnitude spin priors can under-explore moderate-to-high spin regions. A prior uniform in spin-vector configuration space yields different spin-magnitude inferences while leaving effective-spin constraints similar.
Publication
arXiv (gr-qc:2602.12859)

Status: Preprint

Authors: Vaishak Prasad; B. S. Sathyaprakash

Venue: arXiv (gr-qc:2602.12859)

Shows that near-zero spin inferences for binary black holes may be driven by spin-prior choices.