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

2008/03/31 by Thibault Damour, Alessandro Nagar, Mark Hannam +5 · 171 citations
Mathematics · Physics and Astronomy · #Arithmetic #Astronomy #Astrophysical Phenomena and Observations #Astrophysics #Baryon #Binary number #Coalescence (physics) #Gamma-ray bursts and supernovae #Gravitational wave #Mass ratio #Mathematics #Numerical relativity #Omega #Physics #Pulsars and Gravitational Waves Research #Quantum mechanics #Waveform #gr-qc

paper · pdf · doi:10.1103/physrevd.78.044039

published in Physical review. D. Particles, fields, gravitation, and cosmology/Physical review. D. Particles and fields 78(4) (American Physical Society) · 25 pages, 15 figures. Improved discussion about errors on numerical relativity data. Version published in Phys. Rev. D

openalex publication_date 2008/08/18 · arxiv created 2008/08/29 · arxiv updated 2009/12/01 · openalex created_date 2025/10/10 · openalex updated_date 2026/08/05

Abstract

The effective-one-body (EOB) formalism contains several flexibility parameters, notably a₅, v_pole, and a_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 M\ensuremathω\ensuremath≤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 \ensuremath-0.0014 and +0.0008 radians over a time span of \ensuremath∼2464M up to gravitational wave frequency M\ensuremathω=0.1, and between +0.0013 and \ensuremath-0.0185 over a time span of 96M after M\ensuremathω=0.1 up to M\ensuremathω=0.1565. The dephasings between EOB and the new coalescence data are found to be smaller than: (i) \ifmmode±\else\textpm\fi0.025 radians over a time span of 730M (11 cycles) up to merger, in the equal-mass case, and (ii) \ifmmode±\else\textpm\fi0.05 radians over a time span of about 950M (17 cycles) up to merger in the 2\ensuremath\mathbin: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.

Citations

• Gravitational-Wave Extraction from an Inspiraling Configuration of Merging Black Holes
• Comparing effective-one-body gravitational waveforms to accurate numerical data
• Asymptotically Flat Initial Data¶with Prescribed Regularity at Infinity
• Effective one body approach to the dynamics of two spinning black holes with next-to-leading order spin-orbit coupling
• Consistency of Post-Newtonian Waveforms with Numerical Relativity
• Dimensional regularization of the gravitational interaction of point masses
• Binary black hole merger in the extreme-mass-ratio limit
• Quasiequilibrium binary black hole sequences for puncture data derived from helical Killing vector conditions
• Faithful effective-one-body waveforms of small-mass-ratio coalescing black hole binaries
• Introduction to dynamical horizons in numerical relativity
• Gauge conditions for long-term numerical black hole evolutions without excision
• Effective one-body approach to general relativistic two-body dynamics
• Anatomy of the binary black hole recoil: A multipolar analysis
• An Approach to Gravitational Radiation by a Method of Spin Coefficients
• Determination of the last stable orbit for circular general relativistic binaries at the third post-Newtonian approximation
• INTRODUCTORY LECTURES ON THE EFFECTIVE ONE BODY FORMALISM
• Gravitational Radiation from Post-Newtonian Sources and Inspiralling Compact Binaries

Cited by

• Template banks to search for low-mass binary black holes in advanced gravitational-wave detectors
• Accuracy and effectualness of closed-form, frequency-domain waveforms for nonspinning black hole binaries
• Testing gravitational-wave searches with numerical relativity waveforms: results from the first Numerical INJection Analysis (NINJA) project