Bayesian parameter estimation of stellar-mass black-hole binaries with LISA

TL;DR

This paper develops a Bayesian analysis pipeline for measuring properties of stellar-mass black hole binaries with LISA, demonstrating high-precision parameter estimation on simulated data including eccentric and precessing systems.

Contribution

It introduces an efficient Bayesian parameter-estimation method using nested sampling and accurate waveforms for LISA data analysis of black hole binaries.

Findings

Successfully recovered 22 binaries with SNR > 8 from simulated data.

Achieved mass measurements with 0.02 solar mass accuracy at 90% confidence.

Accurately estimated sky location and eccentricity for specific sources.

Abstract

We present a Bayesian parameter-estimation pipeline to measure the properties of inspiralling stellar-mass black hole binaries with LISA. Our strategy (i) is based on the coherent analysis of the three noise-orthogonal LISA data streams, (ii) employs accurate and computationally efficient post-Newtonian waveforms accounting for both spin-precession and orbital eccentricity, and (iii) relies on a nested sampling algorithm for the computation of model evidences and posterior probability density functions of the full 17 parameters describing a binary. We demonstrate the performance of this approach by analyzing the LISA Data Challenge (LDC-1) dataset, consisting of 66 quasi-circular, spin-aligned binaries with signal-to-noise ratios ranging from 3 to 14 and times to merger ranging from 3000 to 2 years. We recover 22 binaries with signal-to-noise ratio higher than 8. Their chirp masses are typically measured to better than $0.02 M_\odot$ at $90\%$ confidence, while the sky-location accuracy ranges from 1 to 100 square degrees. The mass ratio and the spin parameters can only be constrained for sources that merge during the mission lifetime. In addition, we report on the successful recovery of an eccentric, spin-precessing source at signal-to-noise ratio 15 for which we can measure an eccentricity of $3\times 10^{-3}$.