2007/12/31 by P. Ajith · 1 citation
Physics and Astronomy · #gr-qc #astro-ph
paper · pdf · doi:10.1088/0264-9381/25/11/114033
published as Class.Quant.Grav.25:114033,2008 · Minor modifications in the text, added table of phenomenological coefficients
arxiv created 2008/03/15 · arxiv updated 2009/12/01
Coalescing binary black-hole systems are among the most promising sources of gravitational waves for ground-based interferometers. While the inspiral and ring-down stages of the binary black-hole coalescence are well-modelled by analytical approximation methods in general relativity, the recent progress in numerical relativity has enabled us to compute accurate waveforms from the merger stage also. This has an important impact on the search for gravitational waves from binary black holes. In particular, while the current gravitational-wave searches look for each stage of the coalescence separately, combining the results from analytical and numerical relativity enables us to coherently search for all three stages using a single template family. `Complete' binary black-hole waveforms can now be produced by matching post-Newtonian waveforms with those computed by numerical relativity. These waveforms can be parametrised to produce analytical waveform templates. The `complete' waveforms can also be used to estimate the efficiency of different search methods aiming to detect signals from black-hole coalescences. This paper summarises some recent efforts in this direction.