The ''ringdown'' stage of gravitational-wave signals from binary black hole mergers, mainly consisting of a superposition of quasinormal modes emitted by the merger remnant, is a key tool to test fundamental physics and to probe black hole dynamics. However, ringdown models are known to be accurate only in the late-time, stationary regime. A key open problem in the field is to understand if these models are robust when extrapolated to earlier times, and if they can faithfully recover a larger portion of the signal. We address this question through a systematic time-domain calculation of the mismatch between non-precessing, quasi-circular ringdown models parameterised by the progenitor binary's degrees of freedom and full numerical relativity inspiral-merger-ringdown waveforms from the Simulating eXtreme Spacetimes (SXS) simulation catalog. For the best-performing models, the mismatch is typically in the range [10−6,10−4] for the (ℓ,∣m∣)=(2,2) harmonic, and [10−4,10−2] for higher-order modes. Our findings inform ongoing observational searches for quasinormal modes, and underscore the need for improved modeling of higher-order modes to meet the sensitivity requirements of future gravitational-wave detectors.
@article{arxiv.2511.02915,
title = {Accuracy of ringdown models calibrated to numerical relativity simulations},
author = {Francesco Crescimbeni and Gregorio Carullo and Emanuele Berti and Giada Caneva Santoro and Mark Ho-Yeuk Cheung and Paolo Pani},
journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:2511.02915},
year = {2025}
}