An effectual template bank for the detection of gravitational waves from inspiralling compact binaries with generic spins

TL;DR

This paper introduces a three-dimensional template bank for detecting gravitational waves from inspiralling binaries with generic spins, improving search efficiency and detection volume in the advanced detector era.

Contribution

The paper presents a novel stochastic placement algorithm for a reduced-spin template bank that effectively covers the parameter space of spinning compact binaries.

Findings

Achieves high fitting factors (~0.92-0.99) for low-mass spinning binaries.

Provides a 20-52% increase in detection volume over non-spinning searches.

Demonstrates viability for detecting generic spinning low-mass binaries.

Abstract

We report the construction of a three-dimensional template bank for the search for gravitational waves from inspiralling binaries consisting of spinning compact objects. The parameter space consists of two dimensions describing the mass parameters and one "reduced-spin" parameter, which describes the secular (non-precessing) spin effects in the waveform. The template placement is based on an efficient stochastic algorithm and makes use of the semi-analytical computation of a metric in the parameter space. We demonstrate that for "low-mass" ($m_1 + m_2 \lesssim 12\,M_\odot$) binaries, this template bank achieves effective fitting factors $\sim0.92$--$0.99$ towards signals from generic spinning binaries in the advanced detector era over the entire parameter space of interest (including binary neutron stars, binary black holes, and black hole-neutron star binaries). This provides a powerful and viable method for searching for gravitational waves from generic spinning low-mass compact binaries. Under the assumption that spin magnitudes of black-holes [neutron-stars] are uniformly distributed between 0--0.98 [0 -- 0.4] and spin angles are isotropically distributed, the expected improvement in the average detection volume (at a fixed signal-to-noise-ratio threshold) of a search using this reduced-spin bank is $\sim20-52\%$, as compared to a search using a non-spinning bank.