Compact binary coalescences: Formation, evolution, gravitational wave detection, and applications

Ground-based gravitational wave (GW) detectors primarily target several types of astrophysical sources. These include coalescence of compact binaries, such as stellar binary black holes, binary neutron stars, and neutron star-black hole binaries, as well as the stochastic GW background from numerous unresolved inspiralling and merging compact binaries across the universe. Other potential sources, such as core-collapse supernovae and rapidly rotating, nonspherical pulsars, are also anticipated, although their GW signals remain undetected. To date, the Laser Interferometer Gravitational wave Observatory (LIGO), Virgo and KAGRA (LVK collaboration) have successfully identified over 200 compact binary mergers. The GW signals from these mergers enable precise measurements of various system parameters, including distances, component masses, total masses, and spin magnitudes. Population studies of these mergers offer valuable insights into their formation mechanisms and evolution pathways. They also provide stringent constraints on fundamental physics such as neutron star equation of state and physical processes such as common envelope evolution that occur during their formation. Mergers involving neutron components can produce short Gamma-Ray burst and/or kilonova phenomena that can be observable through time-domain surveys and follow-up electromagnetic observations. When combined with the electromagnetic counterparts (if detected) and/or the information on host galaxies, these GW events can serve as bright or dark standard sirens to measure cosmological parameters with high precision. In this paper, we provide a brief review of the current status of compact binary coalescence studies and the detection of compact binary mergers by ground-based GW detectors. We focus on the formation and evolution of GW sources and discuss future prospects for development in this field.