Waveform systematics in identifying strongly gravitationally lensed gravitational waves: Posterior overlap method
arXiv:2306.12908 · doi:10.1088/1361-6382/ad0b9b
Abstract
Gravitational lensing has been extensively observed for electromagnetic signals, but not yet for gravitational waves (GWs). Detecting lensed GWs will have many astrophysical and cosmological applications, and becomes more feasible as the sensitivity of the ground-based detectors improves. One of the missing ingredients to robustly identify lensed GWs is to ensure that the statistical tests used are robust under the choice of underlying waveform models. We present the first systematic study of possible waveform systematics in identifying candidates for strongly lensed GW event pairs, focusing on the posterior overlap method. To this end, we compare Bayes factors from all posteriors using different waveforms included in GWTC data releases from the first three observing runs (O1-O3). We find that waveform choice yields a wide spread of Bayes factors in some cases. However, it is likely that no event pairs from O1 to O3 were missed due to waveform choice. We also perform parameter estimation with additional waveforms for interesting cases, to understand the observed differences. We also briefly explore if computing the overlap from different runs for the same event can be a useful metric for waveform systematics or sampler issues, independent of the lensing scenario.
31 pages, 5 figures, matches version accepted by CQG
References in corpus (24)
- GW170817: Observation of Gravitational Waves from a Binary Neutron Star Inspiral
- Advanced Virgo: a 2nd generation interferometric gravitational wave detector
- Advanced LIGO
- GW190814: Gravitational Waves from the Coalescence of a 23 M Black Hole with a 2.6 M Compact Object
- GW190521: A Binary Black Hole Merger with a Total Mass of
- Robust parameter estimation for compact binaries with ground-based gravitational-wave observations using the LALInference software library
- Observation of gravitational waves from two neutron star-black hole coalescences
- Properties and astrophysical implications of the 150 Msun binary black hole merger GW190521
- An improved effective-one-body model of spinning, nonprecessing binary black holes for the era of gravitational-wave astrophysics with advanced detectors
- Multipolar Effective-One-Body Waveforms for Precessing Binary Black Holes: Construction and Validation
- Validating the effective-one-body model of spinning, precessing binary black holes against numerical relativity
- Search for gravitational lensing signatures in LIGO-Virgo binary black hole events
- The MBTA Pipeline for Detecting Compact Binary Coalescences in the Third LIGO-Virgo Observing Run
- Characterization of systematic error in Advanced LIGO calibration
- GW190521 may be an intermediate mass ratio inspiral
- What if LIGO's gravitational wave detections are strongly lensed by massive galaxy clusters?
- A Parameter Estimation Method that Directly Compares Gravitational Wave Observations to Numerical Relativity
- Accelerating parameter inference with graphics processing units
- Follow-up Analyses to the O3 LIGO-Virgo-KAGRA Lensing Searches
- Constraining cosmological parameters in FLRW metric with lensed GW+EM signals
- Search for Lensed Gravitational Waves Including Morse Phase Information: An Intriguing Candidate in O2
- Exploring the hidden Universe: A novel phenomenological approach for recovering arbitrary gravitational-wave millilensing configurations
- Introduction to Numerical Relativity
- Characterization of systematic error in Advanced LIGO calibration in the second half of O3
Cited by in corpus (4)
- Analysis of GWTC-3 with fully precessing numerical relativity surrogate models
- False positives for gravitational lensing: the gravitational-wave perspective
- Gravitational Lensing in More Realistic Dark Matter Halo Models
- The First Model-Independent Chromatic Microlensing Search: No Evidence in the Gravitational Wave Catalog of LIGO-Virgo-KAGRA