Mode-by-mode Relative Binning: Fast Likelihood Estimation for Gravitational Waveforms with Spin-Orbit Precession and Multiple Harmonics

TL;DR

The paper introduces Mode-by-mode Relative Binning (MRB), a novel technique that significantly accelerates likelihood evaluations for complex gravitational waveforms with spin precession and multiple harmonics, maintaining high accuracy.

Contribution

It presents MRB, a new method that improves likelihood computation speed and accuracy for advanced gravitational wave models involving precession and multiple harmonics.

Findings

Likelihood evaluation is up to ten times faster.

MRB achieves accuracy comparable to exact likelihoods.

The method enables efficient parameter estimation for complex waveforms.

Abstract

Faster likelihood evaluation enhances the efficiency of gravitational wave signal analysis. We present Mode-by-mode Relative Binning (MRB), a new method designed for obtaining fast and accurate likelihoods for advanced waveform models that include spin-orbit precession effects and multiple radiation harmonics from compact binary coalescence. Leveraging the "twisting-up" procedure of constructing precessing waveform modes from non-precessing ones, the new method mitigates degrade of relative binning accuracy due to interference from superimposed modes. Additionally, we supplement algorithms for optimizing the choice of frequency bins specific to any given strain signal under analysis. Using the new method, we are able to evaluate the likelihood with up to an order of magnitude reduction in the number of waveform model calls per frequency compared to the previously used relative binning scheme, and achieve better likelihood accuracy than is sufficient for obtaining source parameter posterior distributions that are indistinguishable from the exact ones.