Testing the validity of the single-spin approximation in inspiral-merger-ringdown waveforms
- Creators
- Pürrer, Michael
- Hannam, Mark
- Ajith, P.
- Husa, Sascha
Abstract
Gravitational-wave signals from black-hole binaries with nonprecessing spins are described by four parameters—each black hole's mass and spin. It has been shown that the dominant spin effects can be modeled by a single spin parameter, leading to the development of several three-parameter waveform models. Previous studies indicate that these models should be adequate for gravitational-wave detection. In this paper we focus on the systematic biases that would result from using them to estimate binary parameters, and consider a one-parameter family of configurations at mass ratio 4 and for one choice of effective single spin. We find that for low-mass binaries within that family of configurations, where the observable waveform is dominated by the inspiral, the systematic bias in all physical parameters is smaller than the parameter uncertainty due to degeneracies between the mass ratio and the spins, at least up to signal-to-noise ratios (SNRs) of 50. For higher-mass binaries, where the merger and ringdown make a greater contribution to the observed signal, the bias in the mass ratio is comparable to its uncertainty at SNRs of only ∼30, and the bias in the measurement of the total spin is larger than the uncertainty defined by the 90% confidence region even at an SNR of only 10. Although this bias may be mitigated in future models by a better choice of single-effective-spin parameter, these results suggest that it may be possible to accurately measure both black-hole spins in intermediate-mass binaries.
Additional Information
© 2013 American Physical Society. Received 13 June 2013; published 3 September 2013. We thank S. Fairhurst, F. Ohme, H. Pfeiffer, S. Khan, B. Sathyaprakash, and P. Schmidt for useful discussions and comments. M. H. was supported by Science and Technology Facilities Council Grants No. ST/H008438/1 and No. ST/I001085/1. S. H. was supported by Grant No. FPA-2007-60220 from the Spanish Ministry of Science and the Spanish MICINNs Consolider-Ingenio 2010 Programme under Grant No. MultiDark CSD2009- 00064. M. P. thanks Caltech and the Universitat de les Illes Balears (UIB) for hospitality. The research of P. A. was partially supported by a FastTrack fellowship and a Ramanujan Fellowship from the Department of Science and Technology, India, and by the EADS Foundation through a chair position on "Mathematics of Complex Systems" at ICTS-TIFR. BAM simulations were carried out at Advanced Research Computing (ARCCA) at Cardiff, and as part of the European PRACE petascale computing initiative on the clusters Hermit, Curie, and SuperMUC.Attached Files
Published - PhysRevD.88.064007.pdf
Submitted - 1306.2320v1.pdf
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Additional details
- Eprint ID
- 41705
- Resolver ID
- CaltechAUTHORS:20131007-102220277
- ST/H008438/1
- Science and Technology Facilities Council (STFC)
- ST/I001085/1
- Science and Technology Facilities Council (STFC)
- FPA-2007-60220
- Spanish Ministry of Science
- CSD2009-00064
- Spanish MICINN Consolider-Ingenio 2010 Programme
- Department of Science and Technology (India) FastTrack Fellowship
- Department of Science and Technology (India) Ramanujan Fellowship
- EADS Foundation
- Created
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2013-10-07Created from EPrint's datestamp field
- Updated
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2021-11-10Created from EPrint's last_modified field