Impact of higher-order modes on the detection of binary black hole coalescences

Pekowsky, L.; Healy, J.; Shoemaker, D. M.; Laguna, Pablo

doi:10.1103/physrevd.87.084008

Cited by 54 publications

(77 citation statements)

References 29 publications

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“…Since most of the energy is radiated in the = 2, m = 2 mode, most analytical modelling work has focused on this mode, and it is the only mode that has been considered so far in searches for compact binaries. However, several studies have investigated the effects of other modes on gravitational wave detection algorithms [27,54,86]. Since there can be a significant mismatch between waveforms that include other modes and waveforms that only include the dominant mode, these modes will likely need to be calibrated in analytical models in the future.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Error-analysis and comparison to analytical models of numerical waveforms produced by the NRAR Collaboration

Hinder

Buonanno

Boyle

et al. 2013

Class. Quantum Grav.

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The Numerical–Relativity–Analytical–Relativity (NRAR) collaboration is a joint effort between members of the numerical relativity, analytical relativity and gravitational-wave data analysis communities. The goal of the NRAR collaboration is to produce numerical-relativity simulations of compact binaries and use them to develop accurate analytical templates for the LIGO/Virgo Collaboration to use in detecting gravitational-wave signals and extracting astrophysical information from them. We describe the results of the first stage of the NRAR project, which focused on producing an initial set of numerical waveforms from binary black holes with moderate mass ratios and spins, as well as one non-spinning binary configuration which has a mass ratio of 10. All of the numerical waveforms are analysed in a uniform and consistent manner, with numerical errors evaluated using an analysis code created by members of the NRAR collaboration. We compare previously-calibrated, non-precessing analytical waveforms, notably the effective-one-body (EOB) and phenomenological template families, to the newly-produced numerical waveforms. We find that when the binary's total mass is ∼100–200M⊙, current EOB and phenomenological models of spinning, non-precessing binary waveforms have overlaps above 99% (for advanced LIGO) with all of the non-precessing-binary numerical waveforms with mass ratios ⩽4, when maximizing over binary parameters. This implies that the loss of event rate due to modelling error is below 3%. Moreover, the non-spinning EOB waveforms previously calibrated to five non-spinning waveforms with mass ratio smaller than 6 have overlaps above 99.7% with the numerical waveform with a mass ratio of 10, without even maximizing on the binary parameters.

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Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Error-analysis and comparison to analytical models of numerical waveforms produced by the NRAR Collaboration

Hinder

Buonanno

Boyle

et al. 2013

Class. Quantum Grav.

Self Cite

160

185

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“…(13); see Sec. II C 1 for details] between waveforms that include subdominant modes and waveforms that only include the dominant mode [13][14][15][16]. This raises the question, by neglecting subdominant modes has the sensitivity of BBH searches been overstated?…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…The authors of Ref. [14] used waveforms generated from numerical relativity as both template and signal to measure mismatch when subdominant modes are not included in templates. They considered systems with total mass M > 100 M ⊙ and mass ratios 1 ≤ q ≤ 4.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

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Impact of higher harmonics in searching for gravitational waves from nonspinning binary black holes

2014

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Current searches for gravitational waves from coalescing binary black holes (BBH) use templates that only include the dominant harmonic. In this study we use effective-one-body multipolar waveforms calibrated to numerical-relativity simulations to quantify the effect of neglecting subdominant harmonics on the sensitivity of searches. We consider both signal-to-noise ratio (SNR) and the signal-based vetoes that are used to reweight SNR. We find that neglecting subdominant modes when searching for nonspinning BBHs with component masses 3 M ⊙ ≤ m 1 , m 2 ≤ 200 M ⊙ and total mass M < 360 M ⊙ in advanced LIGO results in a negligible reduction of the reweighted SNR at detection thresholds. Subdominant modes therefore have no effect on the detection rates predicted for advanced LIGO. Furthermore, we find that if subdominant modes are included in templates the sensitivity of the search becomes worse if we use current search priors, due to an increase in false alarm probability. Templates would need to be weighted differently than what is currently done to compensate for the increase in false alarms. If we split the template bank such that subdominant modes are only used when M ≳ 100 M ⊙ and mass ratio q ≳ 4, we find that the sensitivity does improve for these intermediate mass-ratio BBHs, but the sensitive volume associated with these systems is still small compared to equal-mass systems. Using subdominant modes is therefore unlikely to substantially increase the probability of detecting gravitational waves from nonspinning BBH signals unless there is a relatively large population of intermediate mass-ratio BBHs in the universe.

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“…The reconstructed waveforms are compared to 102 BBH waveforms that have been used previously to investigate the feasibility of detecting precession and higher order modes [48,[53][54][55][56][57][58][59][60][61]. We also include an additional four new simulations with intrinsic parameters motivated by parameter estimation studies of GW150914 [29].…”

Section: E Overlap Between Reconstructed Waveform and Bbh Modelmentioning

confidence: 99%

Observing gravitational-wave transient GW150914 with minimal assumptions

Abbott¹,

Cagnoli²,

Degallaix³

et al. 2016

Phys. Rev. D

161

111

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The gravitational-wave signal GW150914 was first identified on September 14, 2015, by searches for short-duration gravitational-wave transients. These searches identify time-correlated transients in multiple detectors with minimal assumptions about the signal morphology, allowing them to be sensitive to gravitational waves emitted by a wide range of sources including binary black hole mergers. Over the observational period from September 12 to October 20, 2015, these transient searches were sensitive to binary black hole mergers similar to GW150914 to an average distance of ∼600 Mpc. In this paper, we describe the analyses that first detected GW150914 as well as the parameter estimation and waveform reconstruction techniques that initially identified GW150914 as the merger of two black holes. We find that the reconstructed waveform is consistent with the signal from a binary black hole merger with a chirp mass of ∼30 M ⊙ and a total mass before merger of ∼70 M ⊙ in the detector frame.

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Impact of higher-order modes on the detection of binary black hole coalescences

Cited by 54 publications

References 29 publications

Error-analysis and comparison to analytical models of numerical waveforms produced by the NRAR Collaboration

Error-analysis and comparison to analytical models of numerical waveforms produced by the NRAR Collaboration

Impact of higher harmonics in searching for gravitational waves from nonspinning binary black holes

Observing gravitational-wave transient GW150914 with minimal assumptions

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