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General Relativity and Quantum Cosmology, gr-qc
Abstract:
We describe a general procedure to generate spinning, precessing waveforms
that include inspiral, merger and ringdown stages in the effective-one-body
(EOB) approach. The procedure uses a precessing frame in which
precession-induced amplitude and phase modulations are minimized, and an
inertial frame, aligned with the spin of the final black hole, in which we
carry out the matching of the inspiral-plunge to merger-ringdown waveforms. As
a first application, we build spinning, precessing EOB waveforms for the
gravitational modes l=2 such that in the nonprecessing limit those waveforms
agree with the EOB waveforms recently calibrated to numerical-relativity
waveforms. Without recalibrating the EOB model, we then compare EOB and
post-Newtonian precessing waveforms to two numerical-relativity waveforms
produced by the Caltech-Cornell-CITA collaboration. The numerical waveforms are
strongly precessing and have 35 and 65 gravitational-wave cycles. We find a
remarkable agreement between EOB and numerical-relativity precessing waveforms
and spins' evolutions. The phase difference is ~ 0.2 rad at merger, while the
mismatches, computed using the advanced-LIGO noise spectral density, are below
2% when maximizing only on the time and phase at coalescence and on the
polarization angle.
