Gravitational-wave observations of binary black holes: Effect of non-quadrupole modes

Abstract

We study the effect of non-quadrupolar modes in the detection and parameter estimation of gravitational waves (GWs) from non-spinning black-hole binaries. We evaluate the loss of signal-to-noise ratio and the systematic errors in the estimated parameters when one uses a quadrupole-mode template family to detect GW signals with all the relevant modes, for target signals with total masses $20M_{\odot }\le M\le 250M_{\odot }$ and mass ratios $1\le q\le 18$. Target signals are constructed by matching numerical-relativity simulations describing the late inspiral, merger and ringdown of the binary with post-Newtonian/effective-one-body waveforms describing the early inspiral. We find that waveform templates modeling only the quadrupolar modes of the GW signal are sufficient (loss of detection rate $<10\%$) for the detection of GWs with mass ratios $q\le 4$ using advanced GW observatories. Neglecting the effect of non-quadrupole modes will introduce systematic errors in the estimated parameters. The systematic errors are larger than the expected $1\sigma$ statistical errors for binaries with large, unequal masses ($q\gtrsim 4,M\gtrsim 150M_{\odot }$), for sky-averaged signal-to-noise ratios larger than $8$. We provide a summary of the regions in the parameter space where neglecting non-quadrupole modes will cause unacceptable loss of detection rates and unacceptably large systematic biases in the estimated parameters.

arXiv comment11 pages, 9 figures, submitted to Phys. Rev. D

References in corpus (56)

• Gravitational Waves from Mergin Compact Binaries: How Accurately Can One Extract the Binary's Parameters from the Inspiral Waveform?
• Accurate Evolutions of Orbiting Black-Hole Binaries Without Excision
• Gravitational wave extraction from an inspiraling configuration of merging black holes
• On the Numerical Integration of Einstein's Field Equations
• Use and Abuse of the Fisher Information Matrix in the Assessment of Gravitational-Wave Parameter-Estimation Prospects
• Inspiral-merger-ringdown waveforms for black-hole binaries with non-precessing spins
• Gravitational waves from inspiralling compact binaries: Parameter estimation using second-post-Newtonian waveforms
• A simple construction of initial data for multiple black holes
• A template bank for gravitational waveforms from coalescing binary black holes: non-spinning binaries
• Numerical Relativity Using a Generalized Harmonic Decomposition
• A catalog of 174 binary black-hole simulations for gravitational-wave astronomy
• High-accuracy comparison of numerical relativity simulations with post-Newtonian expansions
• Calibration of Moving Puncture Simulations
• A single-domain spectral method for black hole puncture data
• Gravitational radiation from inspiralling compact binaries completed at the third post-Newtonian order
• A New Generalized Harmonic Evolution System
• Improved filters for gravitational waves from inspiralling compact binaries
• 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
• Inspiral-merger-ringdown multipolar waveforms of nonspinning black-hole binaries using the effective-one-body formalism
• The third post-Newtonian gravitational wave polarisations and associated spherical harmonic modes for inspiralling compact binaries in quasi-circular orbits
• A multidomain spectral method for solving elliptic equations
• Solving Einstein's Equations With Dual Coordinate Frames
• Reducing orbital eccentricity in binary black hole simulations
• Harmonic coordinate method for simulating generic singularities
• Binary-black-hole initial data with nearly-extremal spins
• Notes on the integration of numerical relativity waveforms
• Excision boundary conditions for black hole initial data
• Simulations of Binary Black Hole Mergers Using Spectral Methods
• Degeneracy between mass and spin in black-hole-binary waveforms
• Geometry and Regularity of Moving Punctures
• Reducing phase error in long numerical binary black hole evolutions with sixth order finite differencing
• Error-analysis and comparison to analytical models of numerical waveforms produced by the NRAR Collaboration
• Higher signal harmonics, LISA's angular resolution, and dark energy
• Circular orbits and spin in black-hole initial data
• When can gravitational-wave observations distinguish between black holes and neutron stars?
• Extrapolating gravitational-wave data from numerical simulations
• Simulations of non-equal mass black hole binaries with spectral methods
• Search for Gravitational Waves from Binary Black Hole Inspiral, Merger and Ringdown in LIGO-Virgo Data from 2009-2010
• The NINJA-2 catalog of hybrid post-Newtonian/numerical-relativity waveforms for non-precessing black-hole binaries
• Reducing eccentricity in black-hole binary evolutions with initial parameters from post-Newtonian inspiral
• Dynamical Excision Boundaries in Spectral Evolutions of Binary Black Hole Spacetimes
• Binary black hole spectroscopy
• Phenomenology of amplitude-corrected post-Newtonian gravitational waveforms for compact binary inspiral. I. Signal-to-noise ratios
• Gravitational waves from BH-NS binaries: Effective Fisher matrices and parameter estimation using higher harmonics
• Simulations of black-hole binaries with unequal masses or non-precessing spins: accuracy, physical properties, and comparison with post-Newtonian results
• Gravitational-wave data analysis using binary black-hole waveforms
• Template banks to search for low-mass binary black holes in advanced gravitational-wave detectors
• Systematic biases in parameter estimation of binary black-hole mergers
• Impact of Higher-order Modes on the Detection of Binary Black Hole Coalescences
• Parameter Estimation of Gravitational Waves from Precessing BH-NS Inspirals with higher harmonics
• An efficient iterative method to reduce eccentricity in numerical-relativity simulations of compact binary inspiral
• Parameter Estimation of Gravitational Waves from Nonprecessing BH-NS Inspirals with higher harmonics: Comparing MCMC posteriors to an Effective Fisher Matrix
• Precession-tracking coordinates for simulations of compact-object-binaries
• LISA as a dark energy probe

Cited by in corpus (87)

• GW170104: Observation of a 50-Solar-Mass Binary Black Hole Coalescence at Redshift 0.2
• GWTC-2: Compact Binary Coalescences Observed by LIGO and Virgo During the First Half of the Third Observing Run
• GWTC-3: Compact Binary Coalescences Observed by LIGO and Virgo During the Second Part of the Third Observing Run
• GW190521: A Binary Black Hole Merger with a Total Mass of $150M_{\odot }$
• GW190412: Observation of a Binary-Black-Hole Coalescence with Asymmetric Masses
• Properties and astrophysical implications of the 150 Msun binary black hole merger GW190521
• Surrogate models for precessing binary black hole simulations with unequal masses
• IMRPhenomXHM: A multi-mode frequency-domain model for the gravitational wave signal from non-precessing black-hole binaries
• Surrogate model of hybridized numerical relativity binary black hole waveforms
• Enriching the Symphony of Gravitational Waves from Binary Black Holes by Tuning Higher Harmonics
• Black hole ringdown: the importance of overtones
• Directly comparing GW150914 with numerical solutions of Einstein's equations for binary black hole coalescence
• Effects of waveform model systematics on the interpretation of GW150914
• Frequency domain reduced order model of aligned-spin effective-one-body waveforms with higher-order modes
• On the properties of the massive binary black hole merger GW170729
• The Missing Link: Bayesian Detection and Measurement of Intermediate-Mass Black-Hole Binaries
• Can we measure individual black-hole spins from gravitational-wave observations?
• Black-hole spectroscopy, the no-hair theorem and GW150914: Kerr vs. Occam
• Search for intermediate mass black hole binaries in the first observing run of Advanced LIGO
• Impact of gravitational radiation higher order modes on single aligned-spin gravitational wave searches for binary black holes
• Searching for the full symphony of black hole binary mergers
• Detectability of gravitational waves from binary black holes: Impact of precession and higher modes
• A Parameter Estimation Method that Directly Compares Gravitational Wave Observations to Numerical Relativity
• Measuring gravitational-wave higher-order modes
• Constraining the Inclination of Binary Mergers from Gravitational-wave Observations
• Numerical Relativity of Compact Binaries in the 21st Century
• Search for intermediate mass black hole binaries in the first and second observing runs of the Advanced LIGO and Virgo network
• Effects of nonquadrupole modes in the detection and parameter estimation of black hole binaries with nonprecessing spins
• Defining eccentricity for gravitational wave astronomy
• Parameter Estimation with a spinning multi-mode waveform model: IMRPhenomHM
• Targeted large mass ratio numerical relativity surrogate waveform model for GW190814
• Impact of subdominant modes on the interpretation of gravitational-wave signals from heavy binary black hole systems
• The current-type quadrupole moment and gravitational-wave mode $(\ell ,m)=(2,1)$ of compact binary systems at the third post-Newtonian order
• Surrogate model for gravitational wave signals from non-spinning, comparable- to large-mass-ratio black hole binaries built on black hole perturbation theory waveforms calibrated to numerical relativity
• Numerical relativity surrogate model with memory effects and post-Newtonian hybridization
• Measuring intermediate mass black hole binaries with advanced gravitational wave detectors
• Improvements to the construction of binary black hole initial data
• Accurate modeling and mitigation of overlapping signals and glitches in gravitational-wave data
• $\mathtt{bajes}$: Bayesian inference of multimessenger astrophysical data, methods and application to gravitational-waves
• Sensitivity of gravitational wave searches to the full signal of intermediate mass black hole binaries during the LIGO O1 Science Run
• Post-Newtonian templates for binary black-hole inspirals: the effect of the horizon fluxes and the secular change in the black-hole masses and spins
• Can gravitational-wave memory help constrain binary black-hole parameters? A LISA case study
• Evidence for eccentricity in the population of binary black holes observed by LIGO-Virgo-KAGRA
• Accurate inspiral-merger-ringdown gravitational waveforms for non-spinning black-hole binaries including the effect of subdominant modes
• New effective precession spin for modeling multimodal gravitational waveforms in the strong-field regime
• NuRIA: Numerical Relativity Injection Analysis of spinning binary black hole signals in Advanced LIGO data
• Detection and parameter estimation challenges of Type-II lensed binary black hole signals
• Prospects of testing late-time cosmology with weak lensing of gravitational waves and galaxy surveys
• On the Potential Observation of False Deviations from General Relativity in Gravitational Wave Observations from Binary Black Holes
• Systematic Biases in Estimating the Properties of Black Holes Due to Inaccurate Gravitational-Wave Models
• Compact binary coalescences: Constraints on waveforms
• ESIGMAHM: An Eccentric, Spinning inspiral-merger-ringdown waveform model with Higher Modes for the detection and characterization of binary black holes
• Mapping the Universe Expansion: Enabling percent-level measurements of the Hubble Constant with a single binary neutron-star merger detection
• Systematic challenges for future gravitational wave measurements of precessing binary black holes
• Fast post-adiabatic waveforms in the time domain: Applications to compact binary coalescences in LIGO and Virgo
• Interplay of spin-precession and higher harmonics in the parameter estimation of binary black holes
• Statistical and systematic uncertainties in extracting the source properties of neutron star - black hole binaries with gravitational waves
• Including mode mixing in a higher-multipole model for gravitational waveforms from nonspinning black-hole binaries
• Improved analysis of GW190412 with a precessing numerical relativity surrogate waveform model
• Evidence for subdominant multipole moments and precession in merging black-hole-binaries from GWTC-2.1
• Of Harbingers and Higher Modes: Improved gravitational-wave early-warning of compact binary mergers
• On the LISA science performance in observations of short-lived signals from massive black hole binary coalescences
• A fully-coherent all-sky search for gravitational-waves from compact binary coalescences
• An architecture for efficient gravitational wave parameter estimation with multimodal linear surrogate models
• Impact of ringdown higher-order modes on black-hole mergers in dense environments: the scalar field case, detectability and parameter biases
• Breaking bad degeneracies with Love relations: Improving gravitational-wave measurements through universal relations
• The Impact of Spin in Compact Binary Foreground Subtraction for Estimating the Residual Stochastic Gravitational-wave Background in Ground-based Detectors
• Improved inspiral-merger-ringdown model for BBHs on elliptical orbits
• Improved early warning of compact binary mergers using higher modes of gravitational radiation: A population study
• Indication for a compact object next to a LIGO-Virgo binary black hole merger
• Inconsistent black hole kick estimates from gravitational-wave models
• Detectability of gravitational higher order modes in the third-generation era
• Astrophysical signal consistency test adapted for gravitational-wave transient searches
• Luminosity distance uncertainties from gravitational wave detections by third generation observatories
• High-precision source characterization of intermediate mass-ratio black hole coalescences with gravitational waves: The importance of higher-order multipoles
• Impact of higher harmonics of gravitational radiation on the population inference of binary black holes
• Hybrid waveforms for generic precessing binaries for gravitational-wave data analysis
• Improved early-warning estimates of luminosity distance and orbital inclination of compact binary mergers using higher modes of gravitational radiation
• New approach to template banks of gravitational waves with higher harmonics: Reducing matched-filtering cost by over an order of magnitude
• Reconstruction of binary black hole harmonics in LIGO using deep learning
• Driving unmodelled gravitational-wave transient searches using astrophysical information
• A complete measurement of a black-hole recoil through higher-order gravitational-wave modes
• Modeling Gravitational Wave Modes from the Inspiral of Binaries with Arbitrary Eccentricity
• Numerical-relativity surrogate modeling with nearly extremal black-hole spins
• Systematic biases in parameter estimation on LISA binaries: The effect of excluding higher harmonics for non-spinning binaries
• Measuring spin precession from massive black hole binaries with gravitational waves: insights from time-domain signal morphology
• Applying higher-modes consistency test on GW190814 : lessons on no-hair theorem, nature of the secondary compact object and waveform modeling