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Abstract

Driven by advances in scattering amplitudes and worldline-based methods,
recent years have seen significant progress in our ability to calculate
gravitational two-body scattering observables. These observables effectively
encapsulate the gravitational two-body problem in the weak-field and
high-velocity regime (post-Minkowskian, PM), with applications to the bound
two-body problem and gravitational-wave modeling. We leverage PM data to
construct a complete inspiral-merger-ringdown waveform model for non-precessing
spinning black holes within the effective-one-body (EOB) formalism: SEOBNR-PM.
This model is closely based on the highly successful SEOBNRv5 model, used by
the LIGO-Virgo-KAGRA Collaboration, with its key new feature being an EOB
Hamiltonian derived by matching the two-body scattering angle in a perturbative
PM expansion. The model performs remarkably well, showing a median mismatch
against 441 numerical-relativity (NR) simulations that is somewhat lower than a
similarly calibrated version of SEOBNRv5. Comparisons of the binding energy
with NR also demonstrate better agreement than SEOBNRv5, despite the latter
containing additional calibration to NR simulations.