2021/04/19 by T. A. Callister, Callister, T. A. · 3 citations
Engineering · Physics and Astronomy · #Astronomical Observations and Instrumentation #FOS: Physical sciences #Gamma-ray bursts and supernovae #General Relativity and Quantum Cosmology (gr-qc) #High Energy Astrophysical Phenomena (astro-ph.HE) #Pulsars and Gravitational Waves Research #astro-ph.HE #gr-qc
paper · pdf · doi:10.48550/arxiv.2104.09508
8 pages (main body), associated code at http://github.com/tcallister/effective-spin-priors
arxiv created 2021/04/19 · openalex publication_date 2021/04/19 · arxiv updated 2021/04/21 · openalex created_date 2025/10/10 · openalex updated_date 2026/07/28
In gravitational-wave data analysis, we regularly work with a host of non-trivial prior probabilities on compact binary masses, redshifts, and spins. We must regularly manipulate these priors, computing the implied priors on a transformed basis of parameters or reweighting posterior samples from one prior to another. Here, I detail some common manipulations, presenting a table of Jacobians with which to transform priors between mass parametrizations, describing the conversion between source- and detector-frame priors, and deriving analytic expressions for priors on the "effective spin" parameters regularly invoked in gravitational-wave astronomy.