1,347 research outputs found
On tests of general relativity with binary radio pulsars
The timing of radio pulsars in binary systems provides a superb testing
ground of general relativity. Here we propose a Bayesian approach to carry out
these tests, and a relevant efficient numerical implementation, that has
several conceptual and practical advantages with respect to traditional methods
based on least-square-fits that have been used so far: (i) it accounts for the
actual structure of the likelihood function - and it is not predicated on the
Laplace approximation which is implicitly built in least-square fits that can
potentially bias the inference - (ii) it provides the ratio of the evidences of
any two models under consideration as the statistical quantity to compare
different theories, and (iii) it allows us to put joint constraints from the
monitoring of multiple systems, that can be expressed in terms of ratio of
evidences or probability intervals of global (thus not system-dependent)
parameters of the theory, if any exists. Our proposed approach optimally
exploits the progress in timing of radio pulsars and the increase in the number
of observed systems. We demonstrate the power of this framework using simulated
data sets that are representative of current observations.Comment: Accepted for publication on MNRAS Letter
How serious can the stealth bias be in gravitational wave parameter estimation?
The upcoming direct detection of gravitational waves will open a window to
probing the strong-field regime of general relativity (GR). As a consequence,
waveforms that include the presence of deviations from GR have been developed
(e.g. in the parametrized post-Einsteinian approach). TIGER, a data analysis
pipeline which builds Bayesian evidence to support or question the validity of
GR, has been written and tested. In particular, it was shown recently that data
from the LIGO and Virgo detectors will allow to detect deviations from GR
smaller than can be probed with Solar System tests and pulsar timing
measurements or not accessible with conventional tests of GR. However, evidence
from several detections is required before a deviation from GR can be
confidently claimed. An interesting consequence is that, should GR not be the
correct theory of gravity in its strong field regime, using standard GR
templates for the matched filter analysis of interferometer data will introduce
biases in the gravitational wave measured parameters with potentially
disastrous consequences on the astrophysical inferences, such as the
coalescence rate or the mass distribution. We consider three heuristic possible
deviations from GR and show that the biases introduced by assuming GR's
validity manifest in various ways. The mass parameters are usually the most
affected, with biases that can be as large as standard deviations for the
symmetric mass ratio, and nearly one percent for the chirp mass, which is
usually estimated with sub-percent accuracy. We conclude that statements about
the nature of the observed sources, e.g. if both objects are neutron stars,
depend critically on the explicit assumption that GR it the right theory of
gravity in the strong field regime.Comment: 10 pages, 9 figures, 5 table
Efficient computation of the gravitational wave spectrum emitted by eccentric massive black hole binaries in stellar environments
We present a fast and versatile method to calculate the characteristic
spectrum of the gravitational wave background (GWB) emitted by a
population of eccentric massive black hole binaries (MBHBs). We fit the
spectrum of a reference MBHB with a simple analytic function and show that the
spectrum of any other MBHB can be derived from this reference spectrum via
simple scalings of mass, redshift and frequency. We then apply our calculation
to a realistic population of MBHBs evolving via 3-body scattering of stars in
galactic nuclei. We demonstrate that our analytic prescription satisfactorily
describes the signal in the frequency band relevant to pulsar timing array
(PTA) observations. Finally we model the high frequency steepening of the GWB
to provide a complete description of the features characterizing the spectrum.
For typical stellar distributions observed in massive galaxies, our calculation
shows that 3-body scattering alone is unlikely to affect the GWB in the PTA
band and a low frequency turnover in the spectrum is caused primarily by high
eccentricities.Comment: 12 pages, 9 figures, published in MNRA
Observational Black Hole Spectroscopy: A time-domain multimode analysis of GW150914
The detection of the least damped quasi-normal mode from the remnant of the
gravitational wave event GW150914 realised the long sought possibility to
observationally study the properties of quasi-stationary black hole spacetimes
through gravitational waves. Past literature has extensively explored this
possibility and the emerging field has been named "black hole spectroscopy". In
this study, we present results regarding the ringdown spectrum of GW150914,
obtained by application of Bayesian inference to identify and characterise the
ringdown modes. We employ a pure time-domain analysis method which infers from
the data the time of transition between the non-linear and quasi-linear regime
of the post-merger emission in concert with all other parameters characterising
the source. We find that the data provides no evidence for the presence of more
than one quasi-normal mode. However, from the central frequency and damping
time posteriors alone, no unambiguous identification of a single mode is
possible. More in-depth analysis adopting a ringdown model based on results in
perturbation theory over the Kerr metric, confirms that the data do not provide
enough evidence to discriminate among an and the subset of modes.
Our work provides the first comprehensive agnostic framework to observationally
investigate astrophysical black holes' ringdown spectra.Comment: 9 pages, 8 figure
Estimating parameters of binary black holes from gravitational-wave observations of their inspiral, merger and ringdown
We characterize the expected statistical errors with which the parameters of
black-hole binaries can be measured from gravitational-wave (GW) observations
of their inspiral, merger and ringdown by a network of second-generation
ground-based GW observatories. We simulate a population of black-hole binaries
with uniform distribution of component masses in the interval ,
distributed uniformly in comoving volume, with isotropic orientations. From
signals producing signal-to-noise ratio in at least two detectors, we
estimate the posterior distributions of the binary parameters using the
Bayesian parameter estimation code LALInference. The GW signals will be
redshifted due to the cosmological expansion and we measure only the
"redshifted" masses. By assuming a cosmology, it is possible to estimate the
gravitational masses by inferring the redshift from the measured posterior of
the luminosity distance. We find that the measurement of the gravitational
masses will be in general dominated by the error in measuring the luminosity
distance. In spite of this, the component masses of more than of the
population can be measured with accuracy better than using the
Advanced LIGO-Virgo network. Additionally, the mass of the final black hole can
be measured with median accuracy . Spin of the final black hole can
be measured with median accuracy for binaries with
non-spinning (aligned-spin) black holes. Additional detectors in Japan and
India significantly improve the accuracy of sky localization, and moderately
improve the estimation of luminosity distance, and hence, that of all mass
parameters. We discuss the implication of these results on the observational
evidence of intermediate-mass black holes and the estimation of cosmological
parameters using GW observations.Comment: 9 pages, 5 figure
Stellar binary black holes in the LISA band: a new class of standard sirens
The recent Advanced LIGO detections of coalescing black hole binaries (BHBs)
imply a large population of such systems emitting at milli-Hz frequencies,
accessible to the Laser Interferometer Space Antenna (LISA). We show that these
systems provide a new class of cosmological standard sirens. Direct LISA
luminosity distance -- measurements, combined with the inhomogeneous
redshift -- distribution of possible host galaxies provide an effective way
to populate the diagram at , thus allowing a precise local
measurement of the Hubble expansion rate. To be effective, the method requires
a sufficiently precise LISA distance determination and sky localization of a
sizeable number of BHBs, which is best achieved for a 6-link detector
configuration. We find that, for a BHB population consistent with current
fiducial LIGO rates, the Hubble constant can be determined at the
5% and 2% level (68% confidence) assuming two and five million Km
arm-length respectively.Comment: 9 pages 4 figures, to be submitted to MNRA
Tight Mobile Byzantine Tolerant Atomic Storage
This paper proposes the first implementation of an atomic storage tolerant to
mobile Byzantine agents. Our implementation is designed for the round-based
synchronous model where the set of Byzantine nodes changes from round to round.
In this model we explore the feasibility of multi-writer multi-reader atomic
register prone to various mobile Byzantine behaviors. We prove upper and lower
bounds for solving the atomic storage in all the explored models. Our results,
significantly different from the static case, advocate for a deeper study of
the main building blocks of distributed computing while the system is prone to
mobile Byzantine failures
Building Regular Registers with Rational Malicious Servers and Anonymous Clients
The paper addresses the problem of emulating a regular register in a synchronous distributed system where clients invoking and operations are anonymous while server processes maintaining the state of the register may be compromised by rational adversaries (i.e., a server might behave as rational malicious Byzantine process). We first model our problem as a Bayesian game between a client and a rational malicious server where the equilibrium depends on the decisions of the malicious server (behave correctly and not be detected by clients vs returning a wrong register value to clients with the risk of being detected and then excluded by the computation). We prove such equilibrium exists and finally we design a protocol implementing the regular register that forces the rational malicious server to behave correctly
Testing general relativity with compact coalescing binaries: comparing exact and predictive methods to compute the Bayes factor
The second generation of gravitational-wave detectors is scheduled to start
operations in 2015. Gravitational-wave signatures of compact binary
coalescences could be used to accurately test the strong-field dynamical
predictions of general relativity. Computationally expensive data analysis
pipelines, including TIGER, have been developed to carry out such tests. As a
means to cheaply assess whether a particular deviation from general relativity
can be detected, Cornish et al. and Vallisneri recently proposed an approximate
scheme to compute the Bayes factor between a general-relativity
gravitational-wave model and a model representing a class of alternative
theories of gravity parametrised by one additional parameter. This approximate
scheme is based on only two easy-to-compute quantities: the signal-to-noise
ratio of the signal and the fitting factor between the signal and the manifold
of possible waveforms within general relativity. In this work, we compare the
prediction from the approximate formula against an exact numerical calculation
of the Bayes factor using the lalinference library. We find that, using
frequency-domain waveforms, the approximate scheme predicts exact results with
good accuracy, providing the correct scaling with the signal-to-noise ratio at
a fitting factor value of 0.992 and the correct scaling with the fitting factor
at a signal-to-noise ratio of 20, down to a fitting factor of 0.9. We
extend the framework for the approximate calculation of the Bayes factor which
significantly increases its range of validity, at least to fitting factors of
0.7 or higher.Comment: 13 pages, 4 figures, accepted for publication in Classical and
Quantum Gravit
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