Related papers: Testing the validity of the single-spin approximat…
The properties of precessing, coalescing binary black holes are presently inferred through comparison with two approximate models of compact binary coalescence. In this work we show these two models often disagree substantially when…
Gravitational waves are a prediction of general relativity, and with ground-based detectors now running in their advanced configuration, we will soon be able to measure them directly for the first time. Binaries of stellar-mass black holes…
The future space-based gravitational wave detector LISA will be able to measure parameters of coalescing massive black hole binaries, often to extremely high accuracy. Previous work has demonstrated that the black hole spins can have a…
Advances in the field of numerical relativity now make it possible to calculate the final, most powerful merger phase of binary black-hole coalescence for generic binaries. The state of the art has advanced well beyond the equal-mass case…
With one exception, previous analyses of the measurement accuracy of gravitational wave experiments for comparable-mass binary systems have neglected either spin-precession effects or subdominant harmonics and amplitude modulations. Here we…
Gravitational-wave (GW) signals from coalescing compact binaries carry enormous information about the source dynamics and are an excellent tool to probe unknown astrophysics and fundamental physics. Though the updated catalog of compact…
The continued operation of the Advanced LIGO and Advanced Virgo gravitational-wave detectors is enabling the first detailed measurements of the mass, spin, and redshift distributions of the merging binary black hole population. Our present…
Tremendous progress has been made towards the solution of the binary-black-hole problem in numerical relativity. The waveforms produced by numerical relativity will play a role in gravitational wave detection as either test-beds for…
We report the construction of a three-dimensional template bank for the search for gravitational waves from inspiralling binaries consisting of spinning compact objects. The parameter space consists of two dimensions describing the mass…
High-accuracy binary black hole simulations are presented for black holes with spins anti-aligned with the orbital angular momentum. The particular case studied represents an equal-mass binary with spins of equal magnitude S/m^2=0.43757 \pm…
Recent advances in the description of compact binary systems have produced gravitational waveforms that include inspiral, merger and ring-down phases. Comparing results from numerical simulations with those of post-Newtonian (PN), and…
Robustly measuring binary black hole spins via gravitational waves is key to understanding these systems' astrophysical origins, but remains challenging -- especially for high-mass systems, whose signals are short and dominated by the…
We explore spinning, precessing, unequal mass binary black holes to display the long term orbital angular momentum, $\vec{L}$, flip dynamics. We study two prototypical cases of binaries with mass ratios $q=1/7$ and $q=1/15$ and a misaligned…
Attempts to understand the formation of binary black hole (BBH) systems detected via gravitational wave (GW) emission are affected by many unknowns and uncertainties, from both the observational and theoretical (astrophysical modelling)…
We present the first modeled search for gravitational waves using the complete binary black hole gravitational waveform from inspiral through the merger and ringdown for binaries with negligible component spin. We searched approximately 2…
The inspiral-merger-ringdown (IMR) consistency test checks the consistency of the final mass and final spin of a binary black hole merger remnant, independently inferred via the inspiral and merger-ringdown parts of the waveform. As…
Angular momentum and spin precession are expected to be generic features of a significant fraction of binary black hole systems. As such, it is essential to have waveform models that faithfully incorporate the effects of precession. Here,…
The first direct detections of gravitational waves from merging binary black holes open a unique window into the binary black hole formation environment. One promising environmental signature is the angular distribution of the black hole…
Spin precession in merging black-hole binaries is a treasure trove for both astrophysics and fundamental physics. There are now well-established strategies to infer from gravitational-wave data whether at least one of the two black holes is…
Gravitational waves emitted by neutron star black hole mergers encode key properties of neutron stars - such as their size, maximum mass and spins - and black holes. However, the presence of matter and the high mass ratio makes generating…