Accurate Effective-One-Body waveforms of inspiralling and coalescing black-hole binaries

Abstract

The Effective-One-Body (EOB) formalism contains several flexibility parameters, notably $a_5$, $\vp$ and $\a$. We show here how to jointly constrain the values of these parameters by simultaneously best-fitting the EOB waveform to two, independent, numerical relativity (NR) simulations of inspiralling and/or coalescing binary black hole systems: published Caltech-Cornell {\it inspiral} data (considered for gravitational wave frequencies $M\omega \le 0.1$) on one side, and newly computed {\it coalescence} data on the other side. The resulting, approximately unique, "best-fit" EOB waveform is then shown to exhibit excellent agreement with NR coalescence data for several mass ratios. The dephasing between this best-fit EOB waveform and published Caltech-Cornell inspiral data is found to vary between -0.0014 and +0.0008 radians over a time span of $\sim 2464M$ up to gravitational wave frequency $M\omega =0.1$, and between +0.0013 and -0.0185 over a time span of 96M after $M\omega =0.1$ up to $M\omega =0.1565$. The dephasings between EOB and the new coalescence data are found to be smaller than: (i) $\pm 0.025$ radians over a time span of 730M (11 cycles) up to merger, in the equal mass case, and (ii) $\pm 0.05$ radians over a time span of about 950M (17 cycles) up to merger in the 2:1 mass-ratio case. These new results corroborate the aptitude of the EOB formalism to provide accurate representations of general relativistic waveforms, which are needed by currently operating gravitational wave detectors.

25 pages, 15 figures. Improved discussion about errors on numerical relativity data. Version published in Phys. Rev. D

References in corpus (7)

• Recoil velocities from equal-mass binary black-hole mergers: a systematic investigation of spin-orbit aligned configurations
• Effective one body approach to the dynamics of two spinning black holes with next-to-leading order spin-orbit coupling
• Comparing Effective-One-Body gravitational waveforms to accurate numerical data
• Using Full Information When Computing Modes of Post-Newtonian Waveforms From Inspiralling Compact Binaries in Circular Orbit
• Faithful Effective-One-Body waveforms of equal-mass coalescing black-hole binaries
• Anatomy of the binary black hole recoil: A multipolar analysis
• Introductory lectures on the Effective One Body formalism

Cited by in corpus (1)

• Estimating total momentum at finite distances