Coping with Junk Radiation in Binary Black Hole Simulations

Abstract

Spurious junk radiation in the initial data for binary black hole numerical simulations has been an issue of concern. The radiation affects the masses and spins of the black holes, modifying their orbital dynamics and thus potentially compromising the accuracy of templates used in gravitational wave analysis. Our study finds that junk radiation effects are localized to the vicinity of the black holes. Using insights from single black hole simulations, we obtain fitting formulas to estimate the changes from junk radiation on the mass and spin magnitude of the black holes in binary systems. We demonstrate how these fitting formulas could be used to adjust the initial masses and spin magnitudes of the black holes, so the resulting binary has the desired parameters after the junk radiation has left the computational domain. A comparison of waveforms from raw simulations with those from simulations that have been adjusted for junk radiation demonstrate that junk radiation could have an appreciable effect on the templates for LIGO sources with SNRs above 30.

arXiv comment5 pages, 6 figures

References in corpus (12)

• A simple construction of initial data for multiple black holes
• Model Waveform Accuracy Standards for Gravitational Wave Data Analysis
• A single-domain spectral method for black hole puncture data
• Georgia Tech Catalog of Gravitational Waveforms
• High accuracy simulations of black hole binaries:spins anti-aligned with the orbital angular momentum
• Extreme black hole simulations: collisions of unequal mass black holes and the point particle limit
• Conformally curved binary black hole initial data including tidal deformations and outgoing radiation
• Reducing spurious gravitational radiation in binary-black-hole simulations by using conformally curved initial data
• Beyond the Bowen-York extrinsic curvature for spinning black holes
• Post-Newtonian Initial Data with Waves: Progress in Evolution
• A joint approach for reducing eccentricity and spurious gravitational radiation in binary black hole initial data construction
• Trumpet Initial Data for Boosted Black Holes

Cited by in corpus (6)

• Confusing Head-On Collisions with Precessing Intermediate-Mass Binary Black Hole Mergers
• Assessing the Readiness of Numerical Relativity for LISA and 3G Detectors
• Extending Gravitational Wave Extraction Using Weyl Characteristic Fields
• Second MAYA Catalog of Binary Black Hole Numerical Relativity Waveforms
• Conformally flat slices of asymptotically flat spacetimes
• A comprehensive look into the accuracy of SpEC binary black hole waveforms