Astrophysical lessons from the population of merging compact binaries in GWTC-3*

The third Gravitational Wave Transient Catalog (GWTC-3) considerably expands on the number of compact binary coalesces from the previous LIGO-Virgo-KAGRA catalog, and is the first to contain all three classes of detectable binary mergers: binary black holes, binary neutron stars, and neutron star-black holes. 

In this talk, I will report on what GWTC-3 has taught us about the astrophysical population of compact binary coalesces. Such lessons include insight into the purported lower mass gap, the mass distribution of neutron stars in merging binaries, structure in the binary black hole mass distribution, and the evolution of the binary black hole merger rate with redshift. I will also discuss the astrophysical implications of these population properties.