Accurate inspiral-merger-ringdown gravitational waveforms for non-spinning black-hole binaries including the effect of subdominant modes

TL;DR

This paper introduces an analytical gravitational waveform model for non-spinning black-hole binaries that includes subdominant modes, achieving high accuracy and computational efficiency for gravitational wave detection.

Contribution

The work develops a new frequency-domain waveform family incorporating multiple modes, validated against numerical relativity, enhancing detection capabilities for non-spinning black-hole mergers.

Findings

Unfaithfulness as low as 10^{-4} to 10^{-2}

High computational efficiency

Includes multiple subdominant modes

Abstract

We present an analytical waveform family describing gravitational waves (GWs) from the inspiral, merger and ringdown of non-spinning black-hole binaries including the effect of several non-quadrupole modes [($\ell = 2, m = \pm 1), (\ell = 3, m = \pm 3), (\ell = 4, m = \pm 4)$ apart from $(\ell = 2, m=\pm2)$]. We first construct spin-weighted spherical harmonics modes of hybrid waveforms by matching numerical-relativity simulations (with mass ratio $1-10$) describing the late inspiral, merger and ringdown of the binary with post-Newtonian/effective-one-body waveforms describing the early inspiral. An analytical waveform family is constructed in frequency domain by modeling the Fourier transform of the hybrid waveforms making use of analytical functions inspired by perturbative calculations. The resulting highly accurate, ready-to-use waveforms are highly faithful (unfaithfulness $\simeq 10^{-4} - 10^{-2}$) for observation of GWs from non-spinning black hole binaries and are extremely inexpensive to generate.