Post-Newtonian templates for gravitational waves from compact binary inspirals

TL;DR

This paper provides an overview of post-Newtonian gravitational waveform models for compact binary inspirals, essential for detection and analysis of gravitational waves, including the inspiral, merger, and ringdown phases.

Contribution

It offers a comprehensive, accessible overview of the theoretical and practical aspects of post-Newtonian waveform modeling for non-experts, covering inspiral, merger, and ringdown.

Findings

Describes the construction of inspiral waveforms using post-Newtonian theory.

Summarizes the two main full waveform models: effective-one-body and phenomenological models.

Highlights the importance of accurate waveform templates for gravitational wave detection.

Abstract

To enable detection and maximise the physics output of gravitational wave observations from compact binary systems, it is crucial the availability of accurate waveform models. The present work aims at giving an overview for non-experts of the (inspiral) waveforms used in the gravitational wave data analysis for compact binary coalescence. We first provide the essential elements of gravitational radiation physics within a simple Newtonian orbital dynamics and the linearized gravity theory, describing the adiabatic approximation applied to binary systems: the key element to construct the theoretical gravitational waveforms in practice. We next lay out the gravitational waveforms in the post-Newtonian approximation to General Relativity, and highlight the basic input for the inspiral waveform of the slowly evolving, spinning, nonprecessing, quasicircular binary black holes, namely, post-Newtonian energy, fluxes and the (absorption-corrected) balance equation. The post-Newtonian inspiral templates are then presented both in the time and frequency domain. Finally, including the merger and subsequent ringdown phase, we briefly survey the two families of the full waveform models of compact binary mergers currently implemented in LSC Algorithm Library Simulation: the effective-one-body approach and the phenomenological frequency domain model.