Exploring stellar evolution with gravitational-wave observations

Recent detections of gravitational waves from merging binary black holes opened new possibilities to study the evolution of massive stars and black hole formation. In particular, stellar evolution models may be constrained on the basis of the differences in the predicted distribution of black hole masses and redshifts. In this work we propose a framework that combines galaxy and stellar evolution models and use it to predict the detection rates of merging binary black holes by Advanced LIGO. A qualitative comparison of several stellar evolution models shows that they differ by the total number of detectable events, and in some cases exhibit model-specific features in the mass distribution, such as peaks and cutoffs. These features, together with the mass-redshift distribution, can be used to discriminate between various stellar evolution models when the number of detected mergers increases.