Improved Time-Domain Accuracy Standards for Model Gravitational Waveforms

Abstract

Model gravitational waveforms must be accurate enough to be useful for detection of signals and measurement of their parameters, so appropriate accuracy standards are needed. Yet these standards should not be unnecessarily restrictive, making them impractical for the numerical and analytical modelers to meet. The work of Lindblom, Owen, and Brown [Phys. Rev. D 78, 124020 (2008)] is extended by deriving new waveform accuracy standards which are significantly less restrictive while still ensuring the quality needed for gravitational-wave data analysis. These new standards are formulated as bounds on certain norms of the time-domain waveform errors, which makes it possible to enforce them in situations where frequency-domain errors may be difficult or impossible to estimate reliably. These standards are less restrictive by about a factor of 20 than the previously published time-domain standards for detection, and up to a factor of 60 for measurement. These new standards should therefore be much easier to use effectively.

10 pages, 5 figures

References in corpus (11)

• LIGO: The Laser Interferometer Gravitational-Wave Observatory
• Model Waveform Accuracy Standards for Gravitational Wave Data Analysis
• High-accuracy waveforms for binary black hole inspiral, merger, and ringdown
• LISA technology and instrumentation
• High-accuracy numerical simulation of black-hole binaries: Computation of the gravitational-wave energy flux and comparisons with post-Newtonian approximants
• Reducing phase error in long numerical binary black hole evolutions with sixth order finite differencing
• Comparison of Numerical and Post-Newtonian Waveforms for Generic Precessing Black-Hole Binaries
• Binary black hole late inspiral: Simulations for gravitational wave observations
• Comparison of high-accuracy numerical simulations of black-hole binaries with stationary phase post-Newtonian template waveforms for Initial and Advanced LIGO
• Use and Abuse of the Model Waveform Accuracy Standards
• The Final Merger of Black-Hole Binaries

Cited by in corpus (2)

• The Effect of Massive Perturbers on Extreme Mass-Ratio Inspiral Waveforms
• Accuracy and effectualness of closed-form, frequency-domain waveforms for non-spinning black hole binaries