The implications of high BH spins on the origin of BH-BH mergers

The LIGO/Virgo collaboration has reported 50 BH-BH mergers and 8 additional candidates recovered from digging deeper into the detectors noise. Majority of these mergers have low effective spins pointing toward low BH spins and efficient angular momentum transport in massive stars as proposed by several models (e.g., Tayler-Spruit magnetic dynamo or Fuller model). However, out of these 58 mergers, 7 are consistent with having high effective spin parameter (chi_eff>0.3). Additionally, 2 out of these 7 events seem to have high effective spins sourced from the high spin of a primary (more massive) BH. The most extreme merger has very high primary BH dimensionless spin (a_1=0.9). These particular observations may be potentially used to discriminate between the isolated binary and dynamical globular cluster BH-BH formation channels. It may seem that high BH spins point to the dynamical origin if stars have efficient angular momentum transport and form low-spinning BHs. Then dynamical formation is required to produce second and third generations of BH-BH mergers that typically produce high-spinning BHs. Here we show that isolated binary BH-BH formation channel can naturally reproduce such highly spinning BHs. Our models start with efficient angular momentum transport in massive stars that is needed to reproduce majority of BH-BH mergers with low effective spins. However, some massive binaries are subject to strong tidal spin-up allowing for the formation of moderate fraction (~10%) of BH-BH mergers with high effective spins (chi_eff>0.4-0.5). Moreover, binary evolution can produce small fraction (~1%) of BH-BH mergers with almost maximally spinning primary BHs ($a_1>0.9$). Therefore, the formation scenario of those unusual BH-BH mergers remains unresolved.