No Arabic abstract
Gravitational wave signals from compact astrophysical sources such as those observed by LIGO and Virgo require a high-accuracy, theory-based waveform model for the analysis of the recorded signal. Current inspiral-merger-ringdown models are calibrated only up to moderate mass ratios, thereby limiting their applicability to signals from high-mass ratio binary systems. We present EMRISur1dq1e4, a reduced-order surrogate model for gravitational waveforms of 13,500M in duration and including several harmonic modes for non-spinning black hole binary systems with mass-ratios varying from 3 to 10,000 thus vastly expanding the parameter range beyond the current models. This surrogate model is trained on waveform data generated by point-particle black hole perturbation theory (ppBHPT) both for large mass-ratio and comparable mass-ratio binaries. We observe that the gravitational waveforms generated through a simple application of ppBHPT to the comparable mass-ratio cases agree remarkably (and surprisingly) well with those from full numerical relativity after a rescaling of the ppBHPTs total mass parameter. This observation and the EMRISur1dq1e4 surrogate model will enable data analysis studies in the high-mass ratio regime, including potential intermediate mass-ratio signals from LIGO/Virgo and extreme-mass ratio events of interest to the future space-based observatory LISA.
We develop new strategies to build numerical relativity surrogate models for eccentric binary black hole systems, which are expected to play an increasingly important role in current and future gravitational-wave detectors. We introduce a new surrogate waveform model, texttt{NRSur2dq1Ecc}, using 47 nonspinning, equal-mass waveforms with eccentricities up to $0.2$ when measured at a reference time of $5500M$ before merger. This is the first waveform model that is directly trained on eccentric numerical relativity simulations and does not require that the binary circularizes before merger. The model includes the $(2,2)$, $(3,2)$, and $(4,4)$ spin-weighted spherical harmonic modes. We also build a final black hole model, texttt{NRSur2dq1EccRemnant}, which models the mass, and spin of the remnant black hole. We show that our waveform model can accurately predict numerical relativity waveforms with mismatches $approx 10^{-3}$, while the remnant model can recover the final mass and dimensionless spin with absolute errors smaller than $approx 5 times 10^{-4}M$ and $approx 2 times10^{-3}$ respectively. We demonstrate that the waveform model can also recover subtle effects like mode-mixing in the ringdown signal without any special ad-hoc modeling steps. Finally, we show that despite being trained only on equal-mass binaries, texttt{NRSur2dq1Ecc} can be reasonably extended up to mass ratio $qapprox3$ with mismatches $simeq 10^{-2}$ for eccentricities smaller than $sim 0.05$ as measured at a reference time of $2000M$ before merger. The methods developed here should prove useful in the building of future eccentric surrogate models over larger regions of the parameter space.
A powerful technique to calculate gravitational radiation from binary systems involves a perturbative expansion: if the masses of the two bodies are very different, the small body is treated as a point particle of mass $m_p$ moving in the gravitational field generated by the large mass $M$, and one keeps only linear terms in the small mass ratio $m_p/M$. This technique usually yields finite answers, which are often in good agreement with fully nonlinear numerical relativity results, even when extrapolated to nearly comparable mass ratios. Here we study two situations in which the point-particle approximation yields a divergent result: the instantaneous flux emitted by a small body as it orbits the light ring of a black hole, and the total energy absorbed by the horizon when a small body plunges into a black hole. By integrating the Teukolsky (or Zerilli/Regge-Wheeler) equations in the frequency and time domains we show that both of these quantities diverge. We find that these divergences are an artifact of the point-particle idealization, and are able to interpret and regularize this behavior by introducing a finite size for the point particle. These divergences do not play a role in black-hole imaging, e.g. by the Event Horizon Telescope.
Gravitational waves carry energy, angular momentum, and linear momentum. In generic binary black hole mergers, the loss of linear momentum imparts a recoil velocity, or a kick, to the remnant black hole. We exploit recent advances in gravitational waveform and remnant black hole modeling to extract information about the kick from the gravitational wave signal. Kick measurements such as these are astrophysically valuable, enabling independent constraints on the rate of second-generation mergers. Further, we show that kicks must be factored into future ringdown tests of general relativity with third-generation gravitational wave detectors to avoid systematic biases. We find that, although little information can be gained about the kick for existing gravitational wave events, interesting measurements will soon become possible as detectors improve. We show that, once LIGO and Virgo reach their design sensitivities, we will reliably extract the kick velocity for generically precessing binaries--including the so-called superkicks, reaching up to 5000 km/s.
Gravitational waves (GWs) from merging black holes allow for unprecedented probes of strong-field gravity. Testing gravity in this regime requires accurate predictions of gravitational waveform templates in viable extensions of General Relativity. We concentrate on scalar Gauss-Bonnet gravity, one of the most compelling classes of theories appearing as low-energy limit of quantum gravity paradigms, which introduces quadratic curvature corrections to gravity coupled to a scalar field and allows for black hole solutions with scalar-charge. Focusing on inspiralling black hole binaries, we compute the leading-order corrections due to curvature nonlinearities in the GW and scalar waveforms, showing that the new contributions, beyond merely the effect of scalar field, appear at first post-Newtonian order in GWs. We provide ready-to-implement GW polarizations and phasing. Computing the GW phasing in the Fourier domain, we perform a parameter-space study to quantify the detectability of deviations from General Relativity. Our results lay important foundations for future precision tests of gravity with both parametrized and theory-specific searches.
We show that light scalars can form quasibound states around binaries. In the nonrelativistic regime, these states are formally described by the quantum-mechanical Schrodinger equation for a one-electron heteronuclear diatomic molecule. We performed extensive numerical simulations of scalar fields around black hole binaries showing that a scalar structure condenses around the binary -- we dub these states gravitational molecules. We further show that these are well described by the perturbative, nonrelativistic description.