Constraining the parameters of GW150914 and GW170104 with numerical relativity surrogates
Constraining the parameters of GW150914 and GW170104 with numerical relativity surrogates
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DOI：
10.1103/physrevd.99.124005
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发表时间：
2018-08
影响因子：
5
通讯作者：
Prayush Kumar;J. Blackman;Scott E. Field;M. Scheel;C. Galley;M. Boyle;Lawrence E. Kidder;H. Pfeiffer;B. Szilágyi;S. Teukolsky
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文献类型：
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作者：
Prayush Kumar;J. Blackman;Scott E. Field;M. Scheel;C. Galley;M. Boyle;Lawrence E. Kidder;H. Pfeiffer;B. Szilágyi;S. Teukolsky
在过去的几年里，引力波探测器已经开始以一致的速度观测到重黑洞双星（M ≥ 50 M_∞）的合并。精确的引力波形模型对于无偏和精确地估计源参数（如组分黑洞的质量和自旋）是必不可少的。最近开发的代理模型的基础上，高精度的数值相对论（NR）模拟提供了理想的模型约束的物理参数描述这些重黑洞合并事件。在本文中，我们首先证明了这些多模态代理模型作为可靠的参数估计工具的可行性。我们表明，在一个完全贝叶斯框架内，NR代理人可以帮助提取额外的信息，从GW的观察是无法访问的传统模型。我们证明了这一点，通过分析一组合成信号与NR代理模板和当代近似模型进行比较。然后，我们考虑的情况下，最早的两个二元黑洞探测到的LIGO天文台，GW 150914和GW 170104。我们重新分析他们的数据与一般旋切NR为基础的代理模型，并免费提供由此产生的后验样本作为补充材料。我们发现，我们的精细分析是能够提取信息的次主导GW谐波的数据，因此更好地解决退化测量源光度距离和轨道倾角的两个事件。我们的分析估计，这两个事件的来源比以前估计的要远20%-25%。我们的分析还限制了他们的轨道方向更紧密地围绕面对面或面对面的配置比以前。另外，对于GW 150914，我们将有效内旋自旋χ_（eff）更严格地限制在零附近.这项工作是第一个明确地提取子主导GW模式信息从真实的事件。这也是从GW参数估计中消除半解析波形模型中使用的近似的第一步。它强烈地促使NR代理扩展到覆盖更多的二元黑洞参数空间。
Gravitational-wave (GW) detectors have begun to observe coalescences of heavy black hole binaries (M ≳ 50 M_⊙) at a consistent pace for the past few years. Accurate models of gravitational waveforms are essential for unbiased and precise estimation of source parameters, such as masses and spins of component black holes. Recently developed surrogate models based on high-accuracy numerical relativity (NR) simulations provide ideal models for constraining physical parameters describing these heavy black hole merger events. In this paper, we first demonstrate the viability of these multi-modal surrogate models as reliable parameter estimation tools. We show that within a fully Bayesian framework, NR surrogates can help extract additional information from GW observations that is inaccessible to traditional models. We demonstrate this by analyzing a set of synthetic signals with NR surrogate templates and comparing against contemporary approximate models. We then consider the case of two of the earliest binary black holes detected by the LIGO observatories, GW150914 and GW170104. We reanalyze their data with the generically precessing NR-based surrogate model and freely provide the resulting posterior samples as supplemental material. We find that our refined analysis is able to extract information from sub-dominant GW harmonics in data, and therefore better resolve the degeneracy in measuring source luminosity distance and orbital inclination for both events. Our analysis estimates the sources of both events to be 20%–25% further away than was previously estimated. Our analysis also constrains their orbital orientations more tightly around face-on or face-off configurations than before. Additionally, for GW150914 we constrain the effective inspiral spin χ_(eff) more tightly around zero. This work is one of the first to unambiguously extract sub-dominant GW mode information from real events. It is also a first step toward eliminating the approximations used in semi-analytic waveform models from GW parameter estimation. It strongly motivates that NR surrogates be extended to cover more of the binary black hole parameter space.