An eccentric binary black hole inspiral-merger-ringdown gravitational waveform model from numerical relativity and post-Newtonian theory

Ian Hinder; Lawrence E. Kidder; Harald P. Pfeiffer

doi:10.1103/PhysRevD.98.044015

paper

An eccentric binary black hole inspiral-merger-ringdown gravitational waveform model from numerical relativity and post-Newtonian theory

arXiv:1709.02007 · doi:10.1103/PhysRevD.98.044015

Abstract

We present a prescription for computing gravitational waveforms for the inspiral, merger and ringdown of non-spinning eccentric binary black hole systems. The inspiral waveform is computed using the post-Newtonian expansion and the merger waveform is computed by interpolating a small number of quasi-circular NR waveforms. The use of circular merger waveforms is possible because eccentric binaries circularize in the last few cycles before the merger, which we demonstrate up to mass ratio $q = m_{1} / m_{2} = 3$ . The complete model is calibrated to 23 numerical relativity (NR) simulations starting ~20 cycles before the merger with eccentricities $e_{ref} \leq 0.08$ and mass ratios $q \leq 3$ , where $e_{ref}$ is the eccentricity ~7 cycles before the merger. The NR waveforms are long enough that they start above 30 Hz (10 Hz) for BBH systems with total mass $M \geq 80 M_{⊙}$ ( $230 M_{⊙}$ ). We find that, for the sensitivity of advanced LIGO at the time of its first observing run, the eccentric model has a faithfulness with NR of over 97% for systems with total mass $M \geq 85 M_{⊙}$ across the parameter space ( $e_{ref} \leq 0.08, q \leq 3$ ). For systems with total mass $M \geq 70 M_{⊙}$ , the faithfulness is over 97% for $e_{ref} ≲ 0.05$ and $q \leq 3$ . The NR waveforms and the Mathematica code for the model are publicly available.

An eccentric binary black hole inspiral-merger-ringdown gravitational waveform model from numerical relativity and post-Newtonian theory

Abstract

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