Use and Abuse of the Model Waveform Accuracy Standards

Abstract

Accuracy standards have been developed to ensure that the waveforms used for gravitational-wave data analysis are good enough to serve their intended purposes. These standards place constraints on certain norms of the frequency-domain representations of the waveform errors. Examples are given here of possible misinterpretations and misapplications of these standards, whose effect could be to vitiate the quality control they were intended to enforce. Suggestions are given for ways to avoid these problems.

v2: updated to version published in Phys. Rev. D; 10 pages, 7 figures

References in corpus (3)

• Model Waveform Accuracy Standards for Gravitational Wave Data Analysis
• High-accuracy waveforms for binary black hole inspiral, merger, and ringdown
• Comparison of high-accuracy numerical simulations of black-hole binaries with stationary phase post-Newtonian template waveforms for Initial and Advanced LIGO