Improved Time-Domain Accuracy Standards for Model Gravitational Waveforms

TL;DR

This paper develops new, less restrictive time-domain accuracy standards for gravitational waveform models, facilitating their use in detection and parameter estimation without compromising data analysis quality.

Contribution

It extends previous standards by deriving bounds on waveform errors in the time domain, making them more practical for modelers to implement.

Findings

Standards are about 20 times less restrictive for detection.

Standards are up to 60 times less restrictive for measurement.

The new standards are easier to enforce in practice.

Abstract

Model gravitational waveforms must be accurate enough to be useful for detection of signals and measurement of their parameters, so appropriate accuracy standards are needed. Yet these standards should not be unnecessarily restrictive, making them impractical for the numerical and analytical modelers to meet. The work of Lindblom, Owen, and Brown [Phys. Rev. D 78, 124020 (2008)] is extended by deriving new waveform accuracy standards which are significantly less restrictive while still ensuring the quality needed for gravitational-wave data analysis. These new standards are formulated as bounds on certain norms of the time-domain waveform errors, which makes it possible to enforce them in situations where frequency-domain errors may be difficult or impossible to estimate reliably. These standards are less restrictive by about a factor of 20 than the previously published time-domain standards for detection, and up to a factor of 60 for measurement. These new standards should therefore be much easier to use effectively.