The most powerful astrophysical events: Gravitational-wave peak luminosity of binary black holes as predicted by numerical relativity

Abstract

For a brief moment, a binary black hole (BBH) merger can be the most powerful astrophysical event in the visible universe. Here we present a model fit for this gravitational-wave peak luminosity of nonprecessing quasicircular BBH systems as a function of the masses and spins of the component black holes, based on numerical relativity (NR) simulations and the hierarchical fitting approach introduced by X. Jiménez-Forteza et al. [Phys. Rev. D 95, 064024 (2017), arXiv:1611.00332]. This fit improves over previous results in accuracy and parameter-space coverage and can be used to infer posterior distributions for the peak luminosity of future astrophysical signals like GW150914 and GW151226. The model is calibrated to the l<=6 modes of 378 nonprecessing NR simulations up to mass ratios of 18 and dimensionless spin magnitudes up to 0.995, and includes unequal-spin effects. We also constrain the fit to perturbative numerical results for large mass ratios. Studies of key contributions to the uncertainty in NR peak luminosities, such as (i) mode selection, (ii) finite resolution, (iii) finite extraction radius, and (iv) different methods for converting NR waveforms to luminosity, allow us to use NR simulations from four different codes as a homogeneous calibration set. This study of systematic fits to combined NR and large-mass-ratio data, including higher modes, also paves the way for improved inspiral-merger-ringdown waveform models.

Updated to match PRD version. 22 pages, 22 figures, 6 tables; data and example implementations provided as supplementary material

References in corpus (30)

• Advanced Virgo: a 2nd generation interferometric gravitational wave detector
• Advanced LIGO
• Robust parameter estimation for compact binaries with ground-based gravitational-wave observations using the LALInference software library
• BayesWave: Bayesian Inference for Gravitational Wave Bursts and Instrument Glitches
• Inspiral, merger and ringdown of unequal mass black hole binaries: a multipolar analysis
• Calibration of Moving Puncture Simulations
• Gravitational waves from resolvable massive black hole binary systems and observations with Pulsar Timing Arrays
• Faithful Effective-One-Body waveforms of small-mass-ratio coalescing black-hole binaries
• Validating the effective-one-body model of spinning, precessing binary black holes against numerical relativity
• Hierarchical data-driven approach to fitting numerical relativity data for nonprecessing binary black holes with an application to final spin and radiated energy
• Improved effective-one-body description of coalescing nonspinning black-hole binaries and its numerical-relativity completion
• Remnant mass, spin, and recoil from spin aligned black-hole binaries
• Measuring the parameters of massive black hole binary systems with Pulsar Timing Array observations of gravitational waves
• Reducing phase error in long numerical binary black hole evolutions with sixth order finite differencing
• Binary black hole merger in the extreme mass ratio limit
• Zoom-Whirl Orbits in Black Hole Binaries
• Gravitational Waves from a Particle in Circular Orbits around a Schwarzschild Black Hole to the 22nd Post-Newtonian Order
• Remnant of binary black-hole mergers: New simulations and peak luminosity studies
• A new gravitational wave generation algorithm for particle perturbations of the Kerr spacetime
• Binary black hole merger in the extreme-mass-ratio limit: a multipolar analysis
• Matched Filtering of Numerical Relativity Templates of Spinning Binary Black Holes
• Modeling the source of GW150914 with targeted numerical-relativity simulations
• Binary black hole coalescence in the extreme-mass-ratio limit: testing and improving the effective-one-body multipolar waveform
• Gravitational Waves from a Particle in Circular Orbits around a Rotating Black Hole to the 11th Post-Newtonian Order
• Perturbative extraction of gravitational waveforms generated with Numerical Relativity
• Parameter estimation for gravitational-wave bursts with the BayesWave pipeline
• Implementation of higher-order absorbing boundary conditions for the Einstein equations
• The most powerful astrophysical events: Gravitational-wave peak luminosity of binary black holes as predicted by numerical relativity
• The antikick strikes back: recoil velocities for nearly-extremal binary black hole mergers in the test-mass limit
• Comparison of subdominant gravitational wave harmonics between post-Newtonian and numerical relativity calculations and construction of multi-mode hybrids

Cited by in corpus (33)

• GWTC-1: A Gravitational-Wave Transient Catalog of Compact Binary Mergers Observed by LIGO and Virgo during the First and Second Observing Runs
• GWTC-2: Compact Binary Coalescences Observed by LIGO and Virgo During the First Half of the Third Observing Run
• GW170814: A Three-Detector Observation of Gravitational Waves from a Binary Black Hole Coalescence
• GW170608: Observation of a 19-solar-mass Binary Black Hole Coalescence
• Properties and astrophysical implications of the 150 Msun binary black hole merger GW190521
• Computationally efficient models for the dominant and sub-dominant harmonic modes of precessing binary black holes
• IMRPhenomXHM: A multi-mode frequency-domain model for the gravitational wave signal from non-precessing black-hole binaries
• Time-domain effective-one-body gravitational waveforms for coalescing compact binaries with nonprecessing spins, tides and self-spin effects
• Setting the cornerstone for the IMRPhenomX family of models for gravitational waves from compact binaries: The dominant harmonic for non-precessing quasi-circular black holes
• GWTC-2.1: Deep Extended Catalog of Compact Binary Coalescences Observed by LIGO and Virgo During the First Half of the Third Observing Run
• A multipolar effective one body waveform model for spin-aligned black hole binaries
• The RIT binary black hole simulations catalog
• PESummary: the code agnostic Parameter Estimation Summary page builder
• Gravitational-wave luminosity of binary neutron stars mergers
• The second RIT binary black hole simulations catalog and its application to gravitational waves parameter estimation
• The Third RIT binary black hole simulations catalog
• Massively Parallel Simulations of Binary Black Hole Intermediate-Mass-Ratio Inspirals
• Second release of the CoRe database of binary neutron star merger waveforms
• High-overtone fits to numerical relativity ringdowns: beyond the dismissed n=8 special tone
• Black-hole remnants from black-hole--neutron-star mergers
• The most powerful astrophysical events: Gravitational-wave peak luminosity of binary black holes as predicted by numerical relativity
• Systematic Biases in Estimating the Properties of Black Holes Due to Inaccurate Gravitational-Wave Models
• Remarks on the maximum luminosity
• Applications of machine learning in gravitational wave research with current interferometric detectors
• Mapping eccentricity evolutions between numerical relativity and effective-one-body gravitational waveforms
• Gravitational wave peak luminosity model for precessing binary black holes
• Peaking into the abyss: Characterizing the merger of equatorial-eccentric-geodesic plunges in rotating black holes
• Characterizing the effect of eccentricity on the dynamics of binary black hole mergers in numerical relativity
• Approaching the black hole by numerical simulations
• Merging Black Holes: Assessing the Performance of Two Analytic Gravitational Waves Models
• Evidence for Planck Luminosity Bound in Quantum Gravity
• Towards an anomaly detection pipeline for gravitational waves at the Einstein Telescope
• The Fourth RIT binary black hole simulations catalog: Extension to Eccentric Orbits