Measuring the spins of heavy binary black holes

TL;DR

This study investigates how the merger and ringdown phases of gravitational wave signals from heavy binary black holes influence the measurement of their spins, highlighting the importance of these phases for accurate spin constraints.

Contribution

It systematically analyzes the measurability of spin parameters in heavy binary black hole mergers using advanced waveform models including precession and higher modes.

Findings

Merger and ringdown phases significantly influence spin measurements for heavy systems.

Spin measurement uncertainty increases with total mass of the binary.

Azimuthal angle between in-plane spins is difficult to measure accurately.

Abstract

An accurate and precise measurement of the spins of individual merging black holes is required to understand their origin. While previous studies have indicated that most of the spin information comes from the inspiral part of the signal, the informative spin measurement of the heavy binary black hole system GW190521 suggests that the merger and ringdown can contribute significantly to the spin constraints for such massive systems. We perform a systematic study into the measurability of the spin parameters of individual heavy binary black hole mergers using a numerical relativity surrogate waveform model including the effects of both spin-induced precession and higher-order modes. We find that the spin measurements are driven by the merger and ringdown parts of the signal for GW190521-like systems, but the uncertainty in the measurement increases with the total mass of the system. We are able to place meaningful constraints on the spin parameters even for systems observed at moderate signal-to-noise ratios, but the measurability depends on the exact six-dimensional spin configuration of the system. Finally, we find that the azimuthal angle between the in-plane projections of the component spin vectors at a given reference frequency cannot be well-measured for most of our simulated configurations even for signals observed with high signal-to-noise ratios.