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Constraining the parameters of GW150914 & GW170104 with numerical relativity surrogates

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 Added by Prayush Kumar
 Publication date 2018
  fields Physics
and research's language is English




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Gravitational-wave detectors have begun to observe coalescences of heavy black holes at a consistent pace for the past few years. Accurate models of gravitational waveforms are essential for unbiased and precise estimation of source parameters. Recently developed surrogate models based on high-accuracy numerical relativity (NR) simulations are ideal for constraining physical parameters of heavy black hole merger events. In this paper, we first demonstrate the viability of these multi-modal surrogates as reliable parameter estimation tools. We show that NR surrogates can extract additional information from GW data that is inaccessible to traditional models, by analyzing a set of synthetic signals with the NR surrogate and other approximants. We also consider the case of two of the earliest binary black holes detected by the LIGO observatories: GW150914 and GW170104. We reanalyze their data with fully-precessing NR-surrogate templates and freely provide the resulting posterior samples as supplemental material. We find that our refined analysis is able to extract information from sub-dominant GW harmonics in data, and therefore better resolve the degeneracy in measuring source luminosity distance and orbital inclination for both events. We estimate the sources of both events to be 20-25% further away than was previously estimated. Our analyses also constrain their orbital orientation more tightly around face-on or face-off configurations than before. Additionally, for GW150914 we constrain the effective inspiral spin more tightly around zero. This work is one of the first to unambiguously extract sub-dominant GW mode information from real events. It is also a first step toward eliminating the approximations used in semi-analytic waveform models from GW parameter estimation. It also motivates that NR surrogates be extended to cover more of the binary black hole parameter space.



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We produce the first astrophysically-relevant numerical binary black hole gravitational waveform in a higher-curvature theory of gravity beyond general relativity. We simulate a system with parameters consistent with GW150914, the first LIGO detection, in order-reduced dynamical Chern-Simons gravity, a theory with motivations in string theory and loop quantum gravity. We present results for the leading-order corrections to the merger and ringdown waveforms, as well as the ringdown quasi-normal mode spectrum. We estimate that such corrections may be discriminated in detections with signal to noise ratio $gtrsim 180-240$, with the precise value depending on the dimension of the GR waveform family used in data analysis.
The LIGO detection of GW150914 provides an unprecedented opportunity to study the two-body motion of a compact-object binary in the large velocity, highly nonlinear regime, and to witness the final merger of the binary and the excitation of uniquely relativistic modes of the gravitational field. We carry out several investigations to determine whether GW150914 is consistent with a binary black-hole merger in general relativity. We find that the final remnants mass and spin, as determined from the low-frequency (inspiral) and high-frequency (post-inspiral) phases of the signal, are mutually consistent with the binary black-hole solution in general relativity. Furthermore, the data following the peak of GW150914 are consistent with the least-damped quasi-normal mode inferred from the mass and spin of the remnant black hole. By using waveform models that allow for parameterized general-relativity violations during the inspiral and merger phases, we perform quantitative tests on the gravitational-wave phase in the dynamical regime and we determine the first empirical bounds on several high-order post-Newtonian coefficients. We constrain the graviton Compton wavelength, assuming that gravitons are dispersed in vacuum in the same way as particles with mass, obtaining a $90%$-confidence lower bound of $10^{13}$ km. In conclusion, within our statistical uncertainties, we find no evidence for violations of general relativity in the genuinely strong-field regime of gravity.
154 - Maria Okounkova 2020
A present challenge in testing general relativity (GR) with binary black hole gravitational wave detections is the inability to perform model-dependent tests due to the lack of merger waveforms in beyond-GR theories. In this study, we produce the first numerical relativity binary black hole gravitational waveform in Einstein dilaton Gauss-Bonnet (EDGB) gravity, a higher-curvature theory of gravity with motivations in string theory. We evolve a binary black hole system in order-reduced EDGB gravity, with parameters consistent with GW150914. We focus on the merger portion of the waveform, due to the presence of secular growth in the inspiral phase. We compute mismatches with the corresponding general relativity merger waveform, finding that from a post-inspiral-only analysis, we can constrain the EDGB lengthscale to be $sqrt{alpha_mathrm{GB}} lesssim 11$ km.
We point out that the observed time delay between the detection of the signal at the Hanford and Livingston LIGO sites from the gravitational wave event GW150914 places an upper bound on the speed of propagation of gravitational waves, $c_{gw}lesssim 1.7$ in the units of speed of light. Combined with the lower bound from the absence of gravitational Cherenkov losses by cosmic rays that rules out most of subluminal velocities, this gives a model-independent double-sided constraint $1lesssim c_{gw}lesssim 1.7$. We compare this result to model-specific constraints from pulsar timing and cosmology.
In response to LIGOs observation of GW170104, we performed a series of full numerical simulations of binary black holes, each designed to replicate likely realizations of its dynamics and radiation. These simulations have been performed at multiple resolutions and with two independent techniques to solve Einsteins equations. For the nonprecessing and precessing simulations, we demonstrate the two techniques agree mode by mode, at a precision substantially in excess of statistical uncertainties in current LIGOs observations. Conversely, we demonstrate our full numerical solutions contain information which is not accurately captured with the approximate phenomenological models commonly used to infer compact binary parameters. To quantify the impact of these differences on parameter inference for GW170104 specifically, we compare the predictions of our simulations and these approximate models to LIGOs observations of GW170104.
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