Related papers: Striking the right tone: toward a self-consistent …
The laser-interferometer space antenna (LISA) will be launched in the mid 2030s. It promises to observe the coalescence of massive black-hole (BH) binaries with signal-to-noise ratios (SNRs) reaching thousands. Crucially, it will detect…
We examine the robustness of black hole ringdown to stochastic horizon-scale structure within an effective field framework. Consistent with the understanding that the spectral instability of quasinormal modes does not necessarily imply…
Merger gravitational waves from binary black hole coalescence carry rich information about the underlying spacetime dynamics. We analyze merger waves from comparable-mass and extreme-mass-ratio binaries, obtained from numerical relativity…
We analyze the ringdown phase of the first detected black-hole merger, GW150914, using a simulation-based inference pipeline based on masked autoregressive flows. We obtain approximate marginal posterior distributions for the ringdown…
Ultralight bosons can form clouds around rotating black holes if their Compton wavelength is comparable to the black hole size. The boson cloud spins down the black hole through a process called superradiance, lowering the black hole spin…
Gravitational wave (GW) detection has enabled us to test General Relativity in an entirely new regime. A prominent role in tests of General Relativity takes the detection of the Quasi-normal modes (QNMs) that arise as the highly distorted…
The detection of the least damped quasi-normal mode from the remnant of the gravitational wave event GW150914 realised the long sought possibility to observationally study the properties of quasi-stationary black hole spacetimes through…
The gravitational waves emitted in the ringdown phase of binary black-hole coalescence are a unique probe of strong gravity. Understanding how deviations from general relativity affect the ringdown phase of black holes, however, is…
Inferring the properties of colliding black holes from gravitational-wave observations is subject to systematic errors arising from modelling uncertainties. Although the accuracy of each model can be calculated through comparison to…
Gravitational waves emitted by distorted black holes---such as those arising from the coalescence of two neutron stars or black holes---carry not only information about the corresponding spacetime but also about the underlying theory of…
Over the past year, a handful of new gravitational wave models have been developed to include multiple harmonic modes thereby enabling for the first time fully Bayesian inference studies including higher modes to be performed. Using one…
Current matched-filter searches for gravitational waves from binary black-hole mergers compare the calibrated detector data to waveform templates that omit the higher-order mode content of the signals predicted by General Relativity.…
We present a fully Bayesian, data-driven framework for identifying quasinormal modes in high-accuracy Cauchy-Characteristic Evolution (CCE) gravitational waveforms. Applying this to a public catalog, we identify QNM overtones, retrograde…
The accuracy of gravitational-wave models of compact binaries has traditionally been addressed by the mismatch between the model and numerical-relativity simulations. This is a measure of the overall agreement between the two waveforms.…
Gravitational waves enable tests of general relativity in the highly dynamical and strong-field regime. Using events detected by LIGO-Virgo up to 1 October 2019, we evaluate the consistency of the data with predictions from the theory. We…
Black-hole binary spin precession admits equilibrium solutions corresponding to systems with (anti-) aligned spins. Among these, binaries in the up-down configuration, where the spin of the heavier (lighter) black hole is co- (counter-)…
Gravitational wave detection has opened up new avenues for exploring and understanding some of the fundamental principles of the universe. The optimal method for detecting modelled gravitational-wave events involves template-based matched…
One of the most triumphant predictions of the theory if general relativity was the recent LIGO-Virgo detection of gravitational wave (GW) signals produced in binary black hole (BH) mergers. However, it is suggested that exotic compact…
The ringdown (RD) phase of gravitational waves is of prime interest for testing general relativity (GR). The modelling of the linear quasi-normal modes (QNMs) within the Kerr spectrum -- or with agnostic parameterized deviations to that GR…
Overtones are known to improve the performance of fits to the ringdown, both in numerical-relativity simulations and gravitational-wave observations. Although the overtone frequencies are a concrete prediction of general relativity, it…