LISA parameter estimation using numerical merger waveforms

TL;DR

This paper investigates LISA's ability to estimate parameters of merging massive black hole binaries using numerical waveforms, showing that including the merger phase improves measurement precision.

Contribution

It introduces a hybrid numerical/analytic waveform approach and demonstrates the impact of merger signals on parameter estimation accuracy for LISA.

Findings

Including merger signals reduces parameter errors by over 50%.

Median errors for mass and redshift are significantly improved with merger data.

Numerical waveforms enhance the fidelity of LISA parameter estimation studies.

Abstract

Recent advances in numerical relativity provide a detailed description of the waveforms of coalescing massive black hole binaries (MBHBs), expected to be the strongest detectable LISA sources. We present a preliminary study of LISA's sensitivity to MBHB parameters using a hybrid numerical/analytic waveform for equal-mass, non-spinning holes. The Synthetic LISA software package is used to simulate the instrument response and the Fisher information matrix method is used to estimate errors in the parameters. Initial results indicate that inclusion of the merger signal can significantly improve the precision of some parameter estimates. For example, the median parameter errors for an ensemble of systems with total redshifted mass of one million Solar masses at a redshift of one were found to decrease by a factor of slightly more than two for signals with merger as compared to signals truncated at the Schwarzchild ISCO.