Accurate effective-one-body waveforms of inspiralling and coalescing black-hole binaries

Damour, Thibault; Nagar, Alessandro; Hannam, Mark; Husa, Sascha; Bruegmann, Bernd

Accurate effective-one-body waveforms of inspiralling and coalescing black-hole binaries

Files

3604.pdf(1.67 MB)

Published Version

Date

2008

Authors

Damour, Thibault

Nagar, Alessandro

Hannam, Mark

Husa, Sascha

Bruegmann, Bernd

Publisher

American Physical Society

Published Version

10.1103/PhysRevD.78.044039

Abstract

The effective-one-body (EOB) formalism contains several flexibility parameters, notably a(5), upsilon(pole) and (a) over bar (RR). We show here how to jointly constrain the values of these parameters by simultaneously best-fitting the EOB waveform to two, independent, numerical relativity (NR) simulations of inspiralling and/or coalescing binary black-hole systems: published Caltech-Cornell inspiral data (considered for gravitational wave frequencies Mw <= 0.1) on one side, and newly computed coalescence data on the other side. The resulting, approximately unique, "best-fit" EOB waveform is then shown to exhibit excellent agreement with NR coalescence data for several mass ratios. The dephasing between this best-fit EOB waveform and published Caltech-Cornell inspiral data is found to vary between -0.0014 and +0.0008 radians over a time span of similar to 2464M up to gravitational wave frequency Mw = 0.1, and between +0.0013 and -0.0185 over a time span of 96M after Mw = 0.1 up to Mw = 0. 1565. The dephasings between EOB and the new coalescence data are found to be smaller than: (i) +/- 0.025 radians over a time span of 730M (11 cycles) up to merger, in the equal-mass case,and (ii) +/- 0.05 radians over a time span of about 950M ( 17 cycles) up to merger in the 2:1 mass-ratio case. These new results corroborate the aptitude of the EOB formalism to provide accurate representations of general relativistic waveforms, which are needed by Currently operating gravitational wave detectors.

Keywords

Gravitational-radiation , Initial data , Compact binaries , Circular orbit , PArticle (peer-reviewed) , Transformations , Perturbations , Spacetimes , Formalism

Citation

Damour, T., Nagar, A., Hannam, M., Husa, S. and Brügmann, B. (2008) 'Accurate effective-one-body waveforms of inspiralling and coalescing black-hole binaries', Physical Review D, 78(4), 044039 (24pp). doi: 10.1103/PhysRevD.78.044039