Investigating the effect of precession on searches for neutron-star–black-hole binaries with Advanced LIGO
Creators
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1.
Syracuse University
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2.
California Institute of Technology
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3.
Max Planck Institute for Gravitational Physics
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4.
Leibniz University Hannover
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5.
University of Wisconsin–Milwaukee
Abstract
The first direct detection of neutron-star– black-hole binaries will likely be made with gravitational-wave observatories. Advanced LIGO and Advanced Virgo will be able to observe neutron-star– black-hole mergers at a maximum distance of 900 Mpc. To achieve this sensitivity, gravitational-wave searches will rely on using a bank of filter waveforms that accurately model the expected gravitational-wave signal. The emitted signal will depend on the masses of the black hole and the neutron star and also the angular momentum of both components. The angular momentum of the black hole is expected to be comparable to the orbital angular momentum when the system is emitting gravitational waves in Advanced LIGO's and Advanced Virgo's sensitive band. This angular momentum will affect the dynamics of the inspiralling system and alter the phase evolution of the emitted gravitational-wave signal. In addition, if the black hole's angular momentum is not aligned with the orbital angular momentum, it will cause the orbital plane of the system to precess. In this work we demonstrate that if the effect of the black hole's angular momentum is neglected in the waveform models used in gravitational-wave searches, the detection rate of (10+1.4)M_⊙ neutron-star– black-hole systems with isotropic spin distributions would be reduced by 33%–37% in comparison to a hypothetical perfect search at a fixed signal-to-noise ratio threshold. The error in this measurement is due to uncertainty in the post-Newtonian approximations that are used to model the gravitational-wave signal of neutron-star– black-hole inspiralling binaries. We describe a new method for creating a bank of filter waveforms where the black hole has nonzero angular momentum that is aligned with the orbital angular momentum. With this bank we find that the detection rate of (10+1.4)M_⊙ neutron-star– black-hole systems would be reduced by 26%–33%. Systems that will not be detected are ones where the precession of the orbital plane causes the gravitational-wave signal to match poorly with nonprecessing filter waveforms. We identify the regions of parameter space where such systems occur and suggest methods for searching for highly precessing neutron-star– black-hole binaries.
Additional Information
© 2014 American Physical Society. Received 12 July 2013; published 13 January 2014. We thank Stefan Ballmer, Alessandra Buonanno, Eliu Huerta, Prayush Kumar, Richard O'Shaughnessy, B. S. Sathyaprakash, Peter Saulson, Matt West and Karl Wette for useful discussions. We also thank Frank Ohme and the anonymous referee for providing thoughtful and insightful comments on this manuscript. This work is supported by National Science Foundation Grants No. PHY- 0847611 (D. A. B. and A. H. N.), No. PHY-1205835 (A. H. N. and I.W. H.), No. PHY-0970074 (E. O.), No. PHY-0855589 (A. L.) and No. PHY11-25915 (D. A. B., I.W. H., E. O., and A. L.). D. A. B., I.W. H., A. L., and E. O. thank the Kavli Institute for Theoretical Physics at Santa Barbara University, supported in part by NSF Grant No. PHY-0551164, for hospitality during this work. D. A. B. thanks the LIGO Laboratory Visitors Program, supported by NSF cooperative Agreement No. PHY-0757058, for hospitality. D. K. and A. L. thank the Max Planck Gesellschaft for support. D. A. B. is supported by the Research Corporation for Science Advancement. Computations used in this work were performed on the Syracuse University Gravitation and Relativity cluster, which is supported by NSF Grants No. PHY-1040231 and No. PHY-1104371.Attached Files
Published - PhysRevD.89.024010.pdf
Submitted - 1307.3562v1.pdf
Files
1307.3562v1.pdf
Additional details
Identifiers
- Eprint ID
- 44569
- Resolver ID
- CaltechAUTHORS:20140401-101158605
Related works
- Describes
- http://arxiv.org/abs/1307.3562 (URL)
Funding
- NSF
- PHY- 0847611
- NSF
- PHY-1205835
- NSF
- PHY-0970074
- NSF
- PHY-0855589
- NSF
- PHY11-25915
- NSF
- PHY-0551164
- NSF Cooperative Agreement
- PHY-0757058
- Max Planck Gesellschaft
- Research Corporation for Science Advancement.
- NSF
- PHY-1040231
- NSF
- PHY-1104371
Dates
- Created
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2014-04-02Created from EPrint's datestamp field
- Updated
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2021-11-10Created from EPrint's last_modified field