Gravitational Waves from Mergin Compact Binaries: How Accurately Can One Extract the Binary's Parameters from the Inspiral Waveform?

TL;DR

This paper assesses how precisely gravitational wave signals from merging compact binaries can determine source parameters like masses, spins, and distance using advanced LIGO/VIRGO detectors, highlighting high measurement accuracy for certain parameters.

Contribution

It provides detailed estimates of parameter measurement accuracies for binary mergers with advanced detectors, including correlations among parameters and the expected precision levels.

Findings

Mass combination ${ m ilde{M}}$ measurable to 0.1-1%

Reduced mass measurable to 10-15% for NS/NS and NS/BH

Distance measurable within 15-30% for most detected signals

Abstract

The most promising source of gravitational waves for the planned detectors LIGO and VIRGO are merging compact binaries, i.e., neutron star/neutron star (NS/NS), neutron star/black hole (NS/BH), and black hole/black-hole (BH/BH) binaries. We investigate how accurately the distance to the source and the masses and spins of the two bodies will be measured from the gravitational wave signals by the three detector LIGO/VIRGO network using ``advanced detectors'' (those present a few years after initial operation). The combination ${\cal M} \equiv (M_1 M_2)^{3/5}(M_1 +M_2)^{-1/5}$ of the masses of the two bodies is measurable with an accuracy $\approx 0.1\%-1\%$. The reduced mass is measurable to $\sim 10\%-15\%$ for NS/NS and NS/BH binaries, and $\sim 50\%$ for BH/BH binaries (assuming $10M_\odot$ BH's). Measurements of the masses and spins are strongly correlated; there is a combination of $\mu$ and the spin angular momenta that is measured to within $\sim 1\%$. We also estimate that distance measurement accuracies will be $\le 15\%$ for $\sim 8\%$ of the detected signals, and $\le 30\%$ for $\sim 60\%$ of the signals, for the LIGO/VIRGO 3-detector network.