Abstract
GW200115 was the second merger of a black hole and a neutron star confidently detected through gravitational waves. Inference on the signal allows for a large black hole spin misaligned with the orbital angular momentum, but shows little support for aligned spin values. We show that this is a natural consequence of measuring the parameters of a black hole–neutron star binary with nonspinning components while assuming the priors used in the LIGO–Virgo–KAGRA analysis. We suggest that, a priori, a nonspinning binary is more consistent with current astrophysical understanding.
Black hole-neutron star binary merger: Dependence on black hole spin orientation and equation of state