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Advanced LIGO and Advanced Virgo's newly-released GWTC-2 catalog ofgravitational-wave detections offers unprecedented information about the spinmagnitudes and orientations of merging binary black holes (BBHs). Notably,analysis of the BBH population suggests the presence of binaries whosecomponent spins are significantly misaligned with respect to their orbitalangular momenta. Significantly misaligned spins are typically predicted to beat odds with isolated field formation via standard common envelope (CE)evolution, and hence a "smoking gun" signature of dynamical binary formationinside dense stellar clusters. Here, we explore whether the LIGO/Virgoobservation of spin-orbit misalignment indeed rules out the possibility thatBBHs are formed entirely in the field via standard CE evolution. In particular,we seek to understand whether, by varying the natal kicks black holes receiveupon formation, we can invoke the CE scenario to self-consistently explain boththe observed spin distribution and merger rate of BBHs. We find that, ifisolated black holes are born with small natal spins, then BBHs formed throughCE require extreme natal kicks to match the observed BBH population, with avelocity dispersion $\sigma =9.7^{+26.7}_{-5.9}\times10^2\,\mathrm{km}\,\mathrm{s}^{-1}$ and$\sigma>260\,\mathrm{km}\,\mathrm{s}^{-1}$ at 99% credibility. To avoid thiscondition, we argue that it is necessary to assume that isolated black holesare born with non-vanishing natal spins, that one or more alternative channelscontribute to the observed BBH population, and/or that other unforeseenmechanisms serve to yield large spin-orbit misalignment in the field.

State of the field: Binary black hole natal kicks and prospects for isolated field formation after GWTC-2