Subscribe to the gold package and get unlimited access to Shamra Academy
Register a new userIntrinsic selection biases of ground-based gravitational wave searches for high-mass BH-BH mergers
90
0
0.0
(
0
)
Added by
Richard O'Shaughnessy
Publication date
2010
fields
Physics
and research's language is
English
Authors
Richard OShaughnessy
Ask ChatGPT about the research
No Arabic abstract
The next generation of ground-based gravitational wave detectors may detect a few mergers of comparable-mass Msimeq 100-1000 Msun (intermediate-mass, or IMBH) spinning black holes. Black hole spin is known to have a significant impact on the orbit, merger signal, and post-merger ringdown of any binary with non-negligible spin. In particular, the detection volume for spinning binaries depends significantly on the component black hole spins. We provide a fit to the single-detector and isotropic-network detection volume versus (total) mass and arbitrary spin for equal-mass binaries. Our analysis assumes matched filtering to all significant available waveform power (up to l=6 available for fitting, but only l<= 4 significant) estimated by an array of 64 numerical simulations with component spins as large as S_{1,2}/M^2 <= 0.8. We provide a spin-dependent estimate of our uncertainty, up to S_{1,2}/M^2 <= 1. For the initial (advanced) LIGO detector, our fits are reliable for $Min[100,500]M_odot$ ($Min[100,1600]M_odot$). In the online version of this article, we also provide fits assuming incomplete information, such as the neglect of higher-order harmonics. We briefly discuss how a strong selection bias towards aligned spins influences the interpretation of future gravitational wave detections of IMBH-IMBH mergers.
rate research
Read More
The LIGO/Virgo collaboration has reported 50 BH-BH mergers and 8 additional candidates recovered from digging deeper into the detectors noise. Majority of these mergers have low effective spins pointing toward low BH spins and efficient angular momentum transport in massive stars as proposed by several models (e.g., Tayler-Spruit magnetic dynamo or Fuller model). However, out of these 58 mergers, 7 are consistent with having high effective spin parameter (chi_eff>0.3). Additionally, 2 out of these 7 events seem to have high effective spins sourced from the high spin of a primary (more massive) BH. The most extreme merger has very high primary BH dimensionless spin (a_1=0.9). These particular observations may be potentially used to discriminate between the isolated binary and dynamical globular cluster BH-BH formation channels. It may seem that high BH spins point to the dynamical origin if stars have efficient angular momentum transport and form low-spinning BHs. Then dynamical formation is required to produce second and third generations of BH-BH mergers that typically produce high-spinning BHs. Here we show that isolated binary BH-BH formation channel can naturally reproduce such highly spinning BHs. Our models start with efficient angular momentum transport in massive stars that is needed to reproduce majority of BH-BH mergers with low effective spins. However, some massive binaries are subject to strong tidal spin-up allowing for the formation of moderate fraction (~10%) of BH-BH mergers with high effective spins (chi_eff>0.4-0.5). Moreover, binary evolution can produce small fraction (~1%) of BH-BH mergers with almost maximally spinning primary BHs ($a_1>0.9$). Therefore, the formation scenario of those unusual BH-BH mergers remains unresolved.
There exist six possible polarization modes of gravitational waves in general metric theory of gravity, while two tensor polarization modes are allowed in general relativity. The properties and number of polarization modes depend on gravity theories. The number of the detectors needs to be equal to the number of the polarization modes of the gravitational waves for separation of polarizations basically. However, a single detector having great sensitivity at lower frequency could be effectively regarded as a virtual detector network including a set of detectors along its trajectory due to a long GW signal from a compact binary and the Earths rotation. Thus, time-varying antenna pattern functions can help testing the polarizations of gravitational waves. We study the effects of the Earths rotation on the polarization test and show a possibility to test the non-tensorial polarization modes from future observations of compact binary mergers with ground-based gravitational detectors such as Einstein telescope and Cosmic Explorer.
Precessing black hole-neutron star (BH-NS) binaries produce a rich gravitational wave signal, encoding the binarys nature and inspiral kinematics. Using the lalinference_mcmc Markov-chain Monte Carlo parameter estimation code, we use two fiducial examples to illustrate how the geometry and kinematics are encoded into the modulated gravitational wave signal, using coordinates well-adapted to precession. Even for precessing binaries, we show the performance of detailed parameter estimation can be estimated by effective estimates: comparisons of a prototype signal with its nearest neighbors, adopting a fixed sky location and idealized two-detector network. We use detailed and effective approaches to show higher harmonics provide nonzero but small local improvement when estimating the parameters of precessing BH-NS binaries. That said, we show higher harmonics can improve parameter estimation accuracy for precessing binaries ruling out approximately-degenerate source orientations. Our work illustrates quantities gravitational wave measurements can provide, such as reliable component masses and the precise orientation of a precessing short gamma ray burst progenitor relative to the line of sight. Effective estimates may provide a simple way to estimate trends in the performance of parameter estimation for generic precessing BH-NS binaries in next-generation detectors. For example, our results suggest that the orbital chirp rate, precession rate, and precession geometry are roughly-independent observables, defining natural variables to organize correlations in the high-dimensional BH-NS binary parameter space.
The possible formation of stellar-mass binary black holes through dynamical interactions in dense stellar environments predicts the existence of binaries with non-negligible eccentricity in the frequency band of ground-based gravitational wave detectors; the detection of binary black hole mergers with measurable orbital eccentricity would validate the existence of this formation channel. Waveform templates currently used in the matched-filter gravitational-wave searches of LIGO-Virgo data neglect effects of eccentricity which is expected to reduce their efficiency to detect eccentric binary black holes. Meanwhile, the sensitivity of coherent unmodeled gravitational-wave searches (with minimal assumptions about the signal model) have been shown to be largely unaffected by the presence of even sizable orbital eccentricity. In this paper, we compare the performance of two state-of-the-art search algorithms recently used by LIGO and Virgo to search for binary black holes in the second Observing Run (O2), quantifying their search sensitivity by injecting numerical-relativity simulations of inspiral-merger-ringdown eccentric waveforms into O2 LIGO data. Our results show that the matched-filter search PyCBC performs better than the unmodeled search cWB for the high chirp mass ($>20 M_{odot}$) and low eccentricity region ($e_{30 Hz} < 0.3$) of parameter space. For moderate eccentricities and low chirp mass, on the other hand, the unmodeled search is more sensitive than the modeled search.
Searches for gravitational-wave transients from binary black hole coalescences typically rely on one of two approaches: matched filtering with templates and morphology-independent excess power searches. Multiple algorithmic implementations in the analysis of data from the first generation of ground-based gravitational wave interferometers have used different strategies for the suppression of non-Gaussian noise transients, and targeted different regions of the binary black hole parameter space. In this paper we compare the sensitivity of three such algorithms: matched filtering with full coalescence templates, matched filtering with ringdown templates and a morphology-independent excess power search. The comparison is performed at a fixed false alarm rate and relies on Monte-carlo simulations of binary black hole coalescences for spinning, non-precessing systems with total mass 25-350 solar mass, which covers the parameter space of stellar mass and intermediate mass black hole binaries. We find that in the mass range of 25 -100 solar mass the sensitive distance of the search, marginalized over source parameters, is best with matched filtering to full waveform templates, to within 10 percent at a false alarm rate of 3 events per year. In the mass range of 100-350 solar mass, the same comparison favors the morphology-independent excess power search to within 20 percent. The dependence on mass and spin is also explored.
Log in to be able to interact and post comments
comments
Fetching comments
Sign in to be able to follow your search criteria
