collaborators

5 papers

gr-qc2026

The Direct Wave is Not a Meaningful Test of Horizon Properties

Anuj Kankani, Sean T. McWilliams

Recently, a distinct non--quasinormal mode component of black hole binary merger radiation, named the direct wave, has been identified. The frequency and damping time of the direct…

gr-qc2026

Direct Waves in Black-Hole Binary Mergers: Insights from the Backwards One Body Model

Anuj Kankani, Sean T. McWilliams

The merger-ringdown radiation from a black hole binary merger is accurately modeled by a sum of linear quasinormal modes (QNMs). Recently, a non-QNM ``direct wave" component of the…

gr-qc2025

Modeling Relative Peak Times of Gravitational Wave Harmonics

Anuj Kankani, Sean T. McWilliams

Accurate modeling of gravitational waves from binary black hole mergers is essential for extracting their rich physics. A key detail for understanding the physics of mergers is pre…

gr-qc2025

BOB the (Waveform) Builder: Optimizing Analytical Black-Hole Binary Merger Waveforms

Anuj Kankani, Sean T. McWilliams

The Backwards-One-Body (BOB) model provides a fully analytical and physically motivated description of the merger-ringdown gravitational radiation emanating from a black hole binar…

gr-qc2025

Spinning Effective-to-Backwards One Body (): combining Effective One-Body inspirals and Backwards One-Body merger-ringdowns for aligned spin black hole binaries

Siddharth Mahesh, Sean T. McWilliams, Zachariah Etienne

High-fidelity gravitational waveform models are essential for realizing the scientific potential of next-generation gravitational-wave observatories. While highly accurate, state-o…