Error-analysis and comparison to analytical models of numerical waveforms produced by the NRAR Collaboration
Abstract
The Numerical-Relativity-Analytical-Relativity (NRAR) collaboration is a joint effort between members of the numerical relativity, analytical relativity and gravitational-wave data analysis communities. The goal of the NRAR collaboration is to produce numerical-relativity simulations of compact binaries and use them to develop accurate analytical templates for the LIGO/Virgo Collaboration to use in detecting gravitational-wave signals and extracting astrophysical information from them. We describe the results of the first stage of the NRAR project, which focused on producing an initial set of numerical waveforms from binary black holes with moderate mass ratios and spins, as well as one non-spinning binary configuration which has a mass ratio of 10. All of the numerical waveforms are analysed in a uniform and consistent manner, with numerical errors evaluated using an analysis code created by members of the NRAR collaboration. We compare previously-calibrated, non-precessing analytical waveforms, notably the effective-one-body (EOB) and phenomenological template families, to the newly-produced numerical waveforms. We find that when the binary's total mass is ~100-200 solar masses, current EOB and phenomenological models of spinning, non-precessing binary waveforms have overlaps above 99% (for advanced LIGO) with all of the non-precessing-binary numerical waveforms with mass ratios <= 4, when maximizing over binary parameters. This implies that the loss of event rate due to modelling error is below 3%. Moreover, the non-spinning EOB waveforms previously calibrated to five non-spinning waveforms with mass ratio smaller than 6 have overlaps above 99.7% with the numerical waveform with a mass ratio of 10, without even maximizing on the binary parameters.
Keywords
Cite
@article{arxiv.1307.5307,
title = {Error-analysis and comparison to analytical models of numerical waveforms produced by the NRAR Collaboration},
author = {Ian Hinder and Alessandra Buonanno and Michael Boyle and Zachariah B. Etienne and James Healy and Nathan K. Johnson-McDaniel and Alessandro Nagar and Hiroyuki Nakano and Yi Pan and Harald P. Pfeiffer and Michael Pürrer and Christian Reisswig and Mark A. Scheel and Erik Schnetter and Ulrich Sperhake and Bela Szilágyi and Wolfgang Tichy and Barry Wardell and Anıl Zenginoglu and Daniela Alic and Sebastiano Bernuzzi and Tanja Bode and Bernd Brügmann and Luisa T. Buchman and Manuela Campanelli and Tony Chu and Thibault Damour and Jason D. Grigsby and Mark Hannam and Roland Haas and Daniel A. Hemberger and Sascha Husa and Lawrence E. Kidder and Pablo Laguna and Lionel London and Geoffrey Lovelace and Carlos O. Lousto and Pedro Marronetti and Richard A. Matzner and Philipp Mösta and Abdul Mroué and Doreen Müller and Bruno C. Mundim and Andrea Nerozzi and Vasileios Paschalidis and Denis Pollney and George Reifenberger and Luciano Rezzolla and Stuart L. Shapiro and Deirdre Shoemaker and Andrea Taracchini and Nicholas W. Taylor and Saul A. Teukolsky and Marcus Thierfelder and Helvi Witek and Yosef Zlochower},
journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:1307.5307},
year = {2013}
}
Comments
51 pages, 10 figures; published version