2017/05/31 by Kyohei Kawaguchi, Koutarou Kyutoku, Hiroyuki Nakano +1
Earth and Planetary Sciences · Mathematics · Physics and Astronomy · #Astrophysical Phenomena and Observations #Astrophysics #Binary black hole #Binary number #Classical mechanics #Computational physics #Computer science #Frame (networking) #Gravitational wave #High-pressure geophysics and materials #Mathematics #Noise (video) #Numerical relativity #Observable #Observer (physics) #Phase (matter) #Physics #Precession #Pulsars and Gravitational Waves Research #Quantum mechanics #Reference frame #Theory of relativity #Waveform #gr-qc
paper · pdf · doi:10.1103/physrevd.97.024017
published as Phys. Rev. D 97, 024017 (2018) · 12 pages, 8 figures, 1 table, published in PRD
openalex publication_date 2018/01/11 · arxiv created 2018/02/19 · arxiv updated 2018/02/20 · openalex created_date 2025/10/10 · openalex updated_date 2026/08/06
We present a new method for extracting the instantaneous orbital axis only from gravitational wave strains of precessing binary systems observed from a particular observer direction. This method enables us to reconstruct the coprecessing frame waveforms only from observed strains for the ideal case with the high signal-to-noise ratio. Specifically, we do not presuppose any theoretical model of the precession dynamics and coprecessing waveforms in our method. We test and measure the accuracy of our method using the numerical relativity simulation data of precessing binary black holes taken from the SXS Catalog. We show that the direction of the orbital axis is extracted within \ensuremath≈0.07 rad error from gravitational waves emitted during the inspiral phase. The coprecessing waveforms are also reconstructed with high accuracy; the mismatch (assuming white noise) between them and the original coprecessing waveforms is typically a few times 10^\ensuremath-3 including the merger-ringdown phase, and can be improved by an order of magnitude focusing only on the inspiral waveform. In this method, the coprecessing frame waveforms are not only the purely technical tools for understanding the complex nature of precessing waveforms but also direct observables.