Testing the validity of the phenomenological gravitational waveform models for nonspinning binary black hole searches at low masses

TL;DR

This study evaluates the effectiveness of phenomenological gravitational waveform models for nonspinning binary black hole searches at low masses using Advanced LIGO, finding that a combined approach yields high fitting factors across the mass range.

Contribution

The paper introduces an effective template family combining different phenomenological models to improve search efficiency for nonspinning BBHs at low masses.

Findings

PhenomC is valid for M<15 Msun with fitting factors >0.97.

Different models perform best in specific mass regions.

The combined effective templates achieve fitting factors >0.99 across the entire mass range.

Abstract

The phenomenological gravitational waveform models, which we refer to as PhenomA, PhenomB and PhenomC, generate full inspiral-merger-ringdown waveforms of coalescing binary back holes (BBHs). These models are defined in the Fourier domain, thus can be used for fast matched filtering in the gravitational wave search. PhenomA has been developed for nonspinning BBH waveforms, while PhenomB and PhenomC were designed to model the waveforms of BBH systems with nonprecessing (aligned) spins, but can also be used for nonspinning systems. In this work, we study the validity of the phenomenological models for nonspinning BBH searches at low masses, $m_{1,2}\geq 4 Msun$ and $m_1+m_2\equiv M \leq 30 Msun$, with Advanced LIGO. As our complete signal waveform model, we adopt EOBNRv2 that is a time-domain inspiral-merger-ringdown waveform model. To investigate the search efficiency of the phenomenological template models, we calculate fitting factors by exploring overlap surfaces. We find that only PhenomC is valid to obtain the fitting factors better than 0.97 in the mass range of $M<15 Msun$. Above $15 Msun$, PhenomA is most efficient in symmetric mass region, PhenomB is most efficient in highly asymmetric mass region, and PhenomC is most efficient in the intermediate region. Specifically, we propose an effective phenomenological template family that can be constructed by employing the phenomenological models in four subregions individually. We find that fitting factors of the effective templates are better than 0.97 in our entire mass region and mostly greater than 0.99.