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

Since 2015, LIGO/Virgo has detected dosens of Binary Black Hole merger Gravitational Wave signals. Identifying the origins of these is key to discover more about these mergers. Rare host galaxies, like AGNs, present a favorable environment for these events due to the possible dynamical interactions in their accretion disks. In this talk, I will present an investigation of the statistical relationship between BBH mergers and AGN hosts by analyzing the overlap in localization, as outlined in Bartos et. al. 2017. The method developed here will be aplicable to establish the fraction of BBH GW detections that come from AGN and to inform real-time EM follow-up.