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General Relativity and Quantum Cosmology, gr-qc
Abstract:
We present a new frequency-domain phenomenological model of the
gravitational-wave signal from the inspiral, merger and ringdown of
non-precessing (aligned-spin) black-hole binaries. The model is calibrated to
19 hybrid effective-one-body--numerical-relativity waveforms up to mass ratios
of 1:18 and black-hole spins of $|a/m| \sim 0.85$ ($0.98$ for equal-mass
systems). The inspiral part of the model consists of an extension of
frequency-domain post-Newtonian expressions, using higher-order terms fit to
the hybrids. The merger-ringdown is based on a phenomenological ansatz that has
been significantly improved over previous models. The model exhibits mismatches
of typically less than 1\% against all 19 calibration hybrids, and an
additional 29 verification hybrids, which provide strong evidence that, over
the calibration region, the model is sufficiently accurate for all relevant
gravitational-wave astronomy applications with the Advanced LIGO and Virgo
detectors. Beyond the calibration region the model produces physically
reasonable results, although we recommend caution in assuming that \emph{any}
merger-ringdown waveform model is accurate outside its calibration region. As
an example, we note that an alternative non-precessing model, SEOBNRv2
(calibrated up to spins of only 0.5 for unequal-mass systems), exhibits
mismatch errors of up to 10\% for high spins outside its calibration region. We
conclude that waveform models would benefit most from a larger number of
numerical-relativity simulations of high-aligned-spin unequal-mass binaries.
