Complete phenomenological gravitational waveforms from spinning coalescing binaries

TL;DR

This paper develops complete analytical gravitational waveforms for spinning coalescing binaries, bridging inspiral and ring-down phases, with high accuracy validated against numerical simulations.

Contribution

It introduces phenomenological waveforms for spinning binaries that combine analytical and numerical methods, extending waveform models to include spin effects.

Findings

Overlap between numerical and phenomenological waveforms ranges from 0.95 to 0.99.

Waveforms are calibrated for equal mass systems with spin magnitude 0.6.

The method improves detection and analysis of gravitational waves from spinning binaries.

Abstract

The quest for gravitational waves from coalescing binaries is customarily performed by the LIGO-Virgo collaboration via matched filtering, which requires a detailed knowledge of the signal. Complete analytical coalescence waveforms are currently available only for the non-precessing binary systems. In this paper we introduce complete phenomenological waveforms for the dominant quadrupolar mode of generically spinning systems. These waveforms are constructed by bridging the gap between the analytically known inspiral phase, described by spin Taylor (T4) approximants in the restricted waveform approximation, and the ring-down phase through a phenomenological intermediate phase, calibrated by comparison with specific, numerically generated waveforms, describing equal mass systems with dimension-less spin magnitudes equal to 0.6. The overlap integral between numerical and phenomenological waveforms ranges between 0.95 and 0.99.