Georgia Tech Catalog of Gravitational Waveforms

TL;DR

This paper presents a comprehensive catalog of 452 gravitational waveforms from binary black hole simulations, aiding the interpretation of gravitational wave events and improving waveform modeling for LIGO.

Contribution

The paper introduces a new publicly available catalog of diverse gravitational waveforms from numerical relativity simulations, covering various binary black hole configurations.

Findings

The catalog includes waveforms for different spin and mass-ratio configurations.

Examples show good agreement with approximate models.

Predictions of final black hole properties are validated.

Abstract

This paper introduces a catalog of gravitational waveforms from the bank of simulations by the numerical relativity effort at Georgia Tech. Currently, the catalog consists of 452 distinct waveforms from more than 600 binary black hole simulations: 128 of the waveforms are from binaries with black hole spins aligned with the orbital angular momentum, and 324 are from precessing binary black hole systems. The waveforms from binaries with non-spinning black holes have mass-ratios $q = m_1/m_2 \le 15$, and those with precessing, spinning black holes have $q \le 8$. The waveforms expand a moderate number of orbits in the late inspiral, the burst during coalescence, and the ring-down of the final black hole. Examples of waveforms in the catalog matched against the widely used approximate models are presented. In addition, predictions of the mass and spin of the final black hole by phenomenological fits are tested against the results from the simulation bank. The role of the catalog in interpreting the GW150914 event and future massive binary black-hole search in LIGO is discussed. The Georgia Tech catalog is publicly available at einstein.gatech.edu/catalog.