Modeling Relative Peak Times of Gravitational Wave Harmonics

TL;DR

This paper introduces two semi-analytical methods to accurately predict the timing differences of gravitational wave harmonic peaks from binary black hole mergers, improving upon existing models and validated against numerical relativity data.

Contribution

The paper presents novel semi-analytical models for predicting peak time differences of gravitational wave modes using NR inputs, enhancing accuracy over existing waveform models.

Findings

Models achieve sub-1M mean and median differences from NR.

Excellent agreement for modes up to l=8.

Models outperform leading EOB and surrogate models in timing accuracy.

Abstract

Accurate modeling of gravitational waves from binary black hole mergers is essential for extracting their rich physics. A key detail for understanding the physics of mergers is predicting the precise time when the amplitude of the gravitational wave strain peaks, which can differ significantly among the different harmonic modes. We propose two semi-analytical methods to predict these differences using the same three inputs from Numerical Relativity (NR): the remnant mass and spin and the instantaneous frequency of each mode at its peak amplitude. The first method uses the frequency evolution predicted by the Backwards-One-Body model, while the second models the motion of an equatorial timelike geodesic in the remnant black hole spacetime. We compare our models to the SXS waveform catalog for quasi-circular, non-precessing systems and find excellent agreement for $l = |m|$ modes up to $l=8$, with mean and median differences from NR below 1$M$ in nearly all cases across the parameter space. We compare our results to the differences predicted by leading Effective-One-Body and NR surrogate waveform models and find that in cases corresponding to the largest timing differences, our models can provide significant increases in accuracy.