Parameter estimation of spinning binary inspirals using Markov-chain Monte Carlo

Abstract

We present a Markov-chain Monte-Carlo (MCMC) technique to study the source parameters of gravitational-wave signals from the inspirals of stellar-mass compact binaries detected with ground-based gravitational-wave detectors such as LIGO and Virgo, for the case where spin is present in the more massive compact object in the binary. We discuss aspects of the MCMC algorithm that allow us to sample the parameter space in an efficient way. We show sample runs that illustrate the possibilities of our MCMC code and the difficulties that we encounter.

10 pages, 2 figures, submitted to Classical and Quantum Gravity

References in corpus (4)

• Search for gravitational waves from binary inspirals in S3 and S4 LIGO data
• Black Hole Spin Evolution: Implications for Short-hard Gamma Ray Bursts and Gravitational Wave Detection
• Coherent Bayesian inference on compact binary inspirals using a network of interferometric gravitational wave detectors
• Search of S3 LIGO data for gravitational wave signals from spinning black hole and neutron star binary inspirals

Cited by in corpus (6)

• Gravitational-Wave Astronomy with Inspiral Signals of Spinning Compact-Object Binaries
• Estimating the parameters of non-spinning binary black holes using ground-based gravitational-wave detectors: Statistical errors
• A Bayesian Approach to the Detection Problem in Gravitational Wave Astronomy
• Degeneracies in Sky Localisation Determination from a Spinning Coalescing Binary through Gravitational Wave Observations: a Markov-Chain Monte-Carlo Analysis for two Detectors
• Parameter estimation for signals from compact binary inspirals injected into LIGO data
• Enhancing the capabilities of LIGO time-frequency plane searches through clustering