Numerical relativity waveform surrogate model for generically precessing binary black hole mergers

By Jonathan Blackman, Scott E. Field, Mark A. Scheel, C. Galley, Christian D. Ott, M. Boyle, Lawrence E. Kidder, Harald P. Pfeiffer, B. Szil'agyi. 2017

165 citations recorded by the source corpus.

A generic, noneccentric binary black hole (BBH) system emits gravitational waves (GWs) that are completely described by seven intrinsic parameters: the black hole spin vectors and the ratio of their masses. Simulating a BBH coalescence by solving Einstein’s equations numerically is computationally expensive, requiring days to months of computing resources for a single set of parameter values. Since theoretical predictions of the GWs are often needed for many different source parameters, a fast and accurate model is essential. We present the first surrogate model for GWs from the coalescence of BBHs including all seven dimensions of the intrinsic noneccentric parameter space. The surrogate model, which we call NRSur7dq2, is built from the results of 744 numerical relativity simulations. NRSur7dq2 covers spin magnitudes up to 0.8 and mass ratios up to 2, includes all l≤4 modes, begins about 20 orbits before merger, and can be evaluated in ∼50 ms. We find the largest NRSur7dq2 errors to be comparable to the largest errors in the numerical relativity simulations, and more than an order of magnitude smaller than the errors of other waveform models. Our model, and more broadly the methods developed here, will enable studies that were not previously possible when using highly accurate waveforms, such as parameter inference and tests of general relativity with GW observations.

Subfields: Astronomy and Astrophysics

View Paper: https://www.semanticscholar.org/paper/8e396b215d45783689dce235def1ec4f0e754c91

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In Astronomy and Astrophysics

Citations in the corpus

Tests of general relativity with the binary black hole signals from the LIGO-Virgo catalog GWTC-1 (2019, methodology): “[68] J.”
Surrogate model of hybridized numerical relativity binary black hole waveforms (2018, methodology): “Three NR surrogate models have been built so far [26–28], including a 7-dimensional (mass ratio q and two spin vectors) model for generically precessing systems in quasi-circular orbit [28].”
Surrogate models for precessing binary black hole simulations with unequal masses (2019, methodology): “This observation has been exploited in the literature [21, 24, 27, 56, 74] to simplify the modeling of precessing systems.”
Bayesian inference for compact binary coalescences with bilby: validation and application to the first LIGO–Virgo gravitational-wave transient catalogue (2020, background): “…to evaluate, e.g., time-domain signal models such as spin-precessing effective-one-body models with higher-order modes (Bohé et al. 2017; Ossokine et al. 2020), numerical-relativity surrogate models (Blackman et al. 2017) and models including tidal effects (Nagar et al. 2018; Lackey et al. 2019).”
GWTC-1: A Gravitational-Wave Transient Catalog of Compact Binary Mergers Observed by LIGO and Virgo during the First and Second Observing Runs (2018, methodology): “Here we systematically compare all O2 BBH observations with NR simulations supplemented by NR surrogate waveforms [236] that cover mass ratios up to q = 0.”