A surrogate model for gravitational waveforms of spin-aligned binary black holes with eccentricities

TL;DR

This paper introduces a reduced-order surrogate model for eccentric binary black hole gravitational waveforms, significantly speeding up waveform generation while maintaining accuracy, aiding LIGO data analysis.

Contribution

The authors develop SEOBNRE_S, a surrogate model that accelerates waveform generation for eccentric binary black holes based on SEOBNRE, covering a range of eccentricities and mass ratios.

Findings

Waveform generation speed increased by 100 to 1000 times.

Model accurately reproduces inspiral-merger-ringdown waveforms.

Applicable to nonspinning and spinning binaries with specified parameter ranges.

Abstract

A waveform model for the eccentric binary black holes named SEOBNRE has been used to analyze the LIGO-Virgo's gravitational wave data by several groups. The accuracy of this model has been validated by comparing it with numerical relativity. However, SEOBNRE is a time-domain model, and the efficiency for generating waveforms is a bottleneck in data analysis. To overcome this disadvantage, we offer a reduced-order surrogate model for eccentric binary black holes based on the SEOBNRE waveforms. This surrogate model (SEOBNRE\_S) can simulate the complete inspiral-merger-ringdown waves with enough accuracy, covering eccentricities from 0 to 0.25 (0.1), and mass ratio from 1:1 to 5:1 (2:1) for nonspinning (spinning) binaries. The speed of waveform generation is accelerated about $10^2 \sim 10^3$ times than the original SEOBNRE model. Therefore SEOBNRE\_S could be helpful in the analysis of LIGO data to find potential eccentricities.