No Arabic abstract
The Numerical-Relativity-Analytical-Relativity (NRAR) collaboration is a joint effort between members of the numerical relativity, analytical relativity and gravitational-wave data analysis communities. The goal of the NRAR collaboration is to produce numerical-relativity simulations of compact binaries and use them to develop accurate analytical templates for the LIGO/Virgo Collaboration to use in detecting gravitational-wave signals and extracting astrophysical information from them. We describe the results of the first stage of the NRAR project, which focused on producing an initial set of numerical waveforms from binary black holes with moderate mass ratios and spins, as well as one non-spinning binary configuration which has a mass ratio of 10. All of the numerical waveforms are analysed in a uniform and consistent manner, with numerical errors evaluated using an analysis code created by members of the NRAR collaboration. We compare previously-calibrated, non-precessing analytical waveforms, notably the effective-one-body (EOB) and phenomenological template families, to the newly-produced numerical waveforms. We find that when the binarys total mass is ~100-200 solar masses, current EOB and phenomenological models of spinning, non-precessing binary waveforms have overlaps above 99% (for advanced LIGO) with all of the non-precessing-binary numerical waveforms with mass ratios <= 4, when maximizing over binary parameters. This implies that the loss of event rate due to modelling error is below 3%. Moreover, the non-spinning EOB waveforms previously calibrated to five non-spinning waveforms with mass ratio smaller than 6 have overlaps above 99.7% with the numerical waveform with a mass ratio of 10, without even maximizing on the binary parameters.
Binary neutron-star systems represent one of the most promising sources of gravitational waves. In order to be able to extract important information, notably about the equation of state of matter at nuclear density, it is necessary to have in hands an accurate analytical model of the expected waveforms. Following our recent work, we here analyze more in detail two general-relativistic simulations spanning about 20 gravitational-wave cycles of the inspiral of equal-mass binary neutron stars with different compactnesses, and compare them with a tidal extension of the effective-one-body (EOB) analytical model. The latter tidally extended EOB model is analytically complete up to the 1.5 post-Newtonian level, and contains an analytically undetermined parameter representing a higher-order amplification of tidal effects. We find that, by calibrating this single parameter, the EOB model can reproduce, within the numerical error, the two numerical waveforms essentially up to the merger. By contrast, analytical models (either EOB, or Taylor-T4) that do not incorporate such a higher-order amplification of tidal effects, build a dephasing with respect to the numerical waveforms of several radians.
Understanding the Bondi-Metzner-Sachs (BMS) frame of the gravitational waves produced by numerical relativity is crucial for ensuring that analyses on such waveforms are performed properly. It is also important that models are built from waveforms in the same BMS frame. Up until now, however, the BMS frame of numerical waveforms has not been thoroughly examined, largely because the necessary tools have not existed. In this paper, we show how to analyze and map to a suitable BMS frame for numerical waveforms calculated with the Spectral Einstein Code (SpEC). However, the methods and tools that we present are general and can be applied to any numerical waveforms. We present an extensive study of 13 binary black hole systems that broadly span parameter space. From these simulations, we extract the strain and also the Weyl scalars using both SpECTREs Cauchy-characteristic extraction module and also the standard extrapolation procedure with a displacement memory correction applied during postprocessing. First, we show that the current center-of-mass correction used to map these waveforms to the center-of-mass frame is not as effective as previously thought. Consequently, we also develop an improved correction that utilizes asymptotic Poincare charges instead of a Newtonian center-of-mass trajectory. Next, we map our waveforms to the post-Newtonian (PN) BMS frame using a PN strain waveform. This helps us find the unique BMS transformation that minimizes the $L^{2}$ norm of the difference between the numerical and PN strain waveforms during the early inspiral phase. We find that once the waveforms are mapped to the PN BMS frame, they can be hybridized with a PN strain waveform much more effectively than if one used any of the previous alignment schemes, which only utilize the Poincare transformations.
An electrohydrodynamic (EHD) flow in a point-to-ring corona configuration is investigated experimentally, analytically and via a multiphysics numerical model. The interaction between the accelerated ions and the neutral gas molecules is modeled as an external body force in the Navier-Stokes equation (NSE). The gas flow characteristics are solved from conservation principles with spectral methods. The analytical and numerical simulation results are compared against experimental measurements of the cathode voltage, ion concentration, and velocity profiles. A nondimensional parameter, X, is formulated as the ratio of the local electric force to the inertial term in the NSE. In the region of X > 1, the electric force dominates the flow dynamics, while in the X << 1 region, the balance of viscous and inertial terms yields traditional pipe flow characteristics.
We present a new set of 95 numerical relativity simulations of non-precessing binary black holes (BBHs). The simulations sample comprehensively both black-hole spins up to spin magnitude of 0.9, and cover mass ratios 1 to 3. The simulations cover on average 24 inspiral orbits, plus merger and ringdown, with low initial orbital eccentricities $e<10^{-4}$. A subset of the simulations extends the coverage of non-spinning BBHs up to mass ratio $q=10$. Gravitational waveforms at asymptotic infinity are computed with two independent techniques, extrapolation, and Cauchy characteristic extraction. An error analysis based on noise-weighted inner products is performed. We find that numerical truncation error, error due to gravitational wave extraction, and errors due to the finite length of the numerical waveforms are of similar magnitude, with gravitational wave extraction errors somewhat dominating at noise-weighted mismatches of $sim 3times 10^{-4}$. This set of waveforms will serve to validate and improve aligned-spin waveform models for gravitational wave science.
We study the effectiveness of stationary-phase approximated post-Newtonian waveforms currently used by ground-based gravitational-wave detectors to search for the coalescence of binary black holes by comparing them to an accurate waveform obtained from numerical simulation of an equal-mass non-spinning binary black hole inspiral, merger and ringdown. We perform this study for the Initial- and Advanced-LIGO detectors. We find that overlaps between the templates and signal can be improved by integrating the match filter to higher frequencies than used currently. We propose simple analytic frequency cutoffs for both Initial and Advanced LIGO, which achieve nearly optimal matches, and can easily be extended to unequal-mass, spinning systems. We also find that templates that include terms in the phase evolution up to 3.5 pN order are nearly always better, and rarely significantly worse, than 2.0 pN templates currently in use. For Initial LIGO we recommend a strategy using templates that include a recently introduced pseudo-4.0 pN term in the low-mass ($M leq 35 MSun$) region, and 3.5 pN templates allowing unphysical values of the symmetric reduced mass $eta$ above this. This strategy always achieves overlaps within 0.3% of the optimum, for the data used here. For Advanced LIGO we recommend a strategy using 3.5 pN templates up to $M=12 MSun$, 2.0 pN templates up to $M=21 MSun$, pseudo-4.0 pN templates up to $65 MSun$, and 3.5 pN templates with unphysical $eta$ for higher masses. This strategy always achieves overlaps within 0.7% of the optimum for Advanced LIGO.