Fast, faithful, frequency-domain effective-one-body waveforms for compact binary coalescences

TL;DR

This paper introduces a frequency-domain effective-one-body waveform model that is fast, accurate, and suitable for generating millions of gravitational-wave signals from binary coalescences, covering inspiral to merger.

Contribution

It presents a novel method combining effective-one-body waveforms with the stationary phase approximation for efficient, faithful frequency-domain gravitational-wave modeling.

Findings

Computationally competitive with existing models

Valid from low frequency to merger for any binary parameters

Applicable to space-based interferometer signals

Abstract

The inference of binary neutron star properties from gravitational-wave observations requires the generation of millions of waveforms, each one spanning about three order of magnitudes in frequency range. Thus, waveform models must be efficiently generated and, at the same time, be faithful from the post-Newtonian quasi-adiabatic inspiral up to the merger regime. A simple solution to this problem is to combine effective-one-body waveforms with the stationary phase approximation to obtain frequency-domain multipolar approximants valid from any low frequency to merger. We demonstrate that effective-one-body frequency-domain waveforms generated in post-adiabatic approximation are computationally competitive with current phenomenological and surrogate models, (virtually) arbitrarily long, and faithful up to merger for any binary parameter. The same method can also be used to efficiently generate intermediate mass binary black hole inspiral waveforms detectable by space-based interferometers.