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Abstract

Accurate models of gravitational waves from merging black holes are necessary
for detectors to observe as many events as possible while extracting the
maximum science. Near the time of merger, the gravitational waves from merging
black holes can be computed only using numerical relativity. In this paper, we
present a major update of the Simulating eXtreme Spacetimes (SXS) Collaboration
catalog of numerical simulations for merging black holes. The catalog contains
2,018 distinct configurations (a factor of 11 increase compared to the 2013 SXS
catalog), including 1426 spin-precessing configurations, with mass ratios
between 1 and 10, and spin magnitudes up to 0.998. The median length of a
waveform in the catalog is 39 cycles of the dominant $\ell=m=2$
gravitational-wave mode, with the shortest waveform containing 7.0 cycles and
the longest 351.3 cycles. We discuss improvements such as correcting for moving
centers of mass and extended coverage of the parameter space. We also present a
thorough analysis of numerical errors, finding typical truncation errors
corresponding to a waveform mismatch of $\sim 10^{-4}$. The simulations provide
remnant masses and spins with uncertainties of 0.03% and 0.1% ($90^{\text{th}}$
percentile), about an order of magnitude better than analytical models for
remnant properties. The full catalog is publicly available at
https://www.black-holes.org/waveforms .