Matched Filtering of Numerical Relativity Templates of Spinning Binary Black Holes

TL;DR

This paper analyzes how numerical relativity waveforms of spinning binary black holes can be matched for gravitational wave detection, emphasizing the importance of higher harmonics and parameter variations in improving detection accuracy.

Contribution

It presents a study of matched filtering of numerical relativity waveforms for spinning binary black holes, highlighting the effects of spin, resolution, and inclination on waveform matching.

Findings

Higher harmonics are essential for detecting spinning black holes.

Waveform match varies with resolution, spin, and inclination.

Preliminary results on template robustness for arbitrary spins.

Abstract

Tremendous progress has been made towards the solution of the binary-black-hole problem in numerical relativity. The waveforms produced by numerical relativity will play a role in gravitational wave detection as either test-beds for analytic template banks or as template banks themselves. As the parameter space explored by numerical relativity expands, the importance of quantifying the effect that each parameter has on first the detection of gravitational waves and then the parameter estimation of their sources increases. In light of this, we present a study of equal-mass, spinning binary-black-hole evolutions through matched filtering techniques commonly used in data analysis. We study how the match between two numerical waveforms varies with numerical resolution, initial angular momentum of the black holes and the inclination angle between the source and the detector. This study is limited by the fact that the spinning black-hole-binaries are oriented axially and the waveforms only contain approximately two and a half orbits before merger. We find that for detection purposes, spinning black holes require the inclusion of the higher harmonics in addition to the dominant mode, a condition that becomes more important as the black-hole-spins increase. In addition, we conduct a preliminary investigation of how well a template of fixed spin and inclination angle can detect target templates of arbitrary spin and inclination for the axial case considered here.