Uncovering the Physical Origins of Black Holes in the Milky Way for Astronomical Surveys

The observational landscape of stellar-mass black holes (BHs) in the Milky Way is expanding beyond X-ray binaries, with Gaia DR4 and Roman expected to open new windows onto BH populations. We use the binary population synthesis framework POSYDON to predict the present-day Galactic BH population and connect it to its evolutionary origins. We test the robustness of these predictions to uncertainties in binary evolution and BH formation, including core-collapse mechanisms, natal kicks, common-envelope efficiency, metallicity, and initial binary distributions. Across our models, we find that most Galactic BHs are isolated, with stellar mergers providing the largest contribution and binary disruptions the second largest. Among surviving binaries, detached BH-BH systems dominate. We identify a distinct, narrow feature at higher BH masses (13, M in the fiducial model) produced by wind-driven evolution of massive Wolf-Rayet progenitors. This feature is particularly prominent among detached BH-BH binaries and persists across variations in binary-evolution and BH-formation physics, but depends strongly on metallicity. At lower masses, these BH-BH systems predominantly originate from progenitors that undergo stable mass transfer before BH formation. Finally, for more direct observational applications, we embed the synthetic populations in a Galactic model, evolve their kinematics, perform first-order microlensing calculations for BH-BH lenses, and examine BH systems with luminous companions in the context of the Gaia BHs. In the latter, we uncover a robust stable-mass-transfer population largely absent in rapid population-synthesis predictions. These results provide an evolutionary framework for interpreting the emerging Galactic BH population across complementary observational channels.