Effective-one-body waveforms calibrated to numerical relativity simulations: coalescence of non-precessing, spinning, equal-mass black holes

Abstract

We present the first attempt at calibrating the effective-one-body (EOB) model to accurate numerical-relativity simulations of spinning, non-precessing black-hole binaries. Aligning the EOB and numerical waveforms at low frequency over a time interval of 1000M, we first estimate the phase and amplitude errors in the numerical waveforms and then minimize the difference between numerical and EOB waveforms by calibrating a handful of EOB-adjustable parameters. In the equal-mass, spin aligned case, we find that phase and fractional amplitude differences between the numerical and EOB (2,2) mode can be reduced to 0.01 radians and 1%, respectively, over the entire inspiral waveforms. In the equal-mass, spin anti-aligned case, these differences can be reduced to 0.13 radians and 1% during inspiral and plunge, and to 0.4 radians and 10% during merger and ringdown. The waveform agreement is within numerical errors in the spin aligned case while slightly over numerical errors in the spin anti-aligned case. Using Enhanced LIGO and Advanced LIGO noise curves, we find that the overlap between the EOB and the numerical (2,2) mode, maximized over the initial phase and time of arrival, is larger than 0.999 for binaries with total mass 30-200Ms. In addition to the leading (2,2) mode, we compare four subleading modes. We find good amplitude and frequency agreements between the EOB and numerical modes for both spin configurations considered, except for the (3,2) mode in the spin anti-aligned case. We believe that the larger difference in the (3,2) mode is due to the lack of knowledge of post-Newtonian spin effects in the higher modes.

15 pages, 8 figures, typos fixed in Eqs.(7-10)

References in corpus (17)

• Inspiral, merger and ring-down of equal-mass black-hole binaries
• Model Waveform Accuracy Standards for Gravitational Wave Data Analysis
• Phenomenological template family for black-hole coalescence waveforms
• High-accuracy waveforms for binary black hole inspiral, merger, and ringdown
• Toward faithful templates for non-spinning binary black holes using the effective-one-body approach
• Faithful Effective-One-Body waveforms of small-mass-ratio coalescing black-hole binaries
• Effective-one-body waveforms calibrated to numerical relativity simulations: coalescence of non-spinning, equal-mass black holes
• An improved analytical description of inspiralling and coalescing black-hole binaries
• Effective one body approach to the dynamics of two spinning black holes with next-to-leading order spin-orbit coupling
• Gravitational self-force correction to the innermost stable circular orbit of a Schwarzschild black hole
• Comparing Effective-One-Body gravitational waveforms to accurate numerical data
• A data-analysis driven comparison of analytic and numerical coalescing binary waveforms: nonspinning case
• Using Full Information When Computing Modes of Post-Newtonian Waveforms From Inspiralling Compact Binaries in Circular Orbit
• Accurate Effective-One-Body waveforms of inspiralling and coalescing black-hole binaries
• High-accuracy numerical simulation of black-hole binaries: Computation of the gravitational-wave energy flux and comparisons with post-Newtonian approximants
• Faithful Effective-One-Body waveforms of equal-mass coalescing black-hole binaries
• Implementation of higher-order absorbing boundary conditions for the Einstein equations

Cited by in corpus (13)

• Extreme Mass-Ratio Inspirals in the Effective-One-Body Approach: Quasi-Circular, Equatorial Orbits around a Spinning Black Hole
• Intermediate-mass-ratio black hole binaries: intertwining numerical and perturbative techniques
• The Effect of Massive Perturbers on Extreme Mass-Ratio Inspiral Waveforms
• Binary black hole coalescence in the extreme-mass-ratio limit: testing and improving the effective-one-body multipolar waveform
• Canonical Formulation of Spin in General Relativity
• Accuracy and effectualness of closed-form, frequency-domain waveforms for non-spinning black hole binaries
• Conservative self-force correction to the innermost stable circular orbit: comparison with multiple post-Newtonian-based methods
• Length requirements for numerical-relativity waveforms
• Separating Gravitational Wave Signals from Instrument Artifacts
• Intermediate-mass-ratio-inspirals in the Einstein Telescope: I. Signal-to-noise ratio calculations
• Intrinsic selection biases of ground-based gravitational wave searches for high-mass BH-BH mergers
• High-order perturbations of a spherical collapsing star
• Spinning compact binary inspiral II: Conservative angular dynamics