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General Relativity and Quantum Cosmology, gr-qc
Abstract:
We present the first attempt at calibrating the effective-one-body (EOB)
model to accurate numerical-relativity simulations of spinning, non-precessing
black-hole binaries. Aligning the EOB and numerical waveforms at low frequency
over a time interval of 1000M, we first estimate the phase and amplitude errors
in the numerical waveforms and then minimize the difference between numerical
and EOB waveforms by calibrating a handful of EOB-adjustable parameters. In the
equal-mass, spin aligned case, we find that phase and fractional amplitude
differences between the numerical and EOB (2,2) mode can be reduced to 0.01
radians and 1%, respectively, over the entire inspiral waveforms. In the
equal-mass, spin anti-aligned case, these differences can be reduced to 0.13
radians and 1% during inspiral and plunge, and to 0.4 radians and 10% during
merger and ringdown. The waveform agreement is within numerical errors in the
spin aligned case while slightly over numerical errors in the spin anti-aligned
case. Using Enhanced LIGO and Advanced LIGO noise curves, we find that the
overlap between the EOB and the numerical (2,2) mode, maximized over the
initial phase and time of arrival, is larger than 0.999 for binaries with total
mass 30-200Ms. In addition to the leading (2,2) mode, we compare four
subleading modes. We find good amplitude and frequency agreements between the
EOB and numerical modes for both spin configurations considered, except for the
(3,2) mode in the spin anti-aligned case. We believe that the larger difference
in the (3,2) mode is due to the lack of knowledge of post-Newtonian spin
effects in the higher modes.
