Stellar progenitors of the gravitational wave chorus: population properties and formation channels

After their first detection in 2015, the ground-based interferometers LIGO, Virgo, and KAGRA are currently running their fourth observing run O4, unveiling the most intriguing signals from the dark universe: ripples in the geometry of space predicted by Einstein's general relativity more than a hundred years ago. As the catalog of detected gravitational-wave events grows from tens to hundreds of sources (and potentially millions in a few decades!), this increasingly detailed information allows us to dig deeper into the (astro)physics of compact objects and their stellar progenitors. Since the astrophysical factories of gravitational waves are thought to be mergers of binary black holes, neutron stars, and white dwarfs, the population properties of binary stellar systems and their evolutionary channels towards the inspiral and merger stage are of particular interest. In this talk, I will review the current state of the art on the modeling of population properties of gravitational wave progenitors, with a main focus on binary stellar systems, providing an overview of what we have learned from the gravitational waves catalog and the questions that still need an answer.