Gravitational-wave observations of binary black holes: Effect of non-quadrupole modes

We study the effect of non-quadrupolar modes in the detection and parameter estimation of gravitational waves (GWs) from non-spinning black-hole binaries. We evaluate the loss of signal-to-noise ratio and the systematic errors in the estimated parameters when one uses a quadrupole-mode template family to detect GW signals with all the relevant modes, for target signals with total masses $20 M_\odot \leq M \leq 250 M_\odot$ and mass ratios $1 \leq q \leq 18$. Target signals are constructed by matching numerical-relativity simulations describing the late inspiral, merger and ringdown of the binary with post-Newtonian/effective-one-body waveforms describing the early inspiral. We find that waveform templates modeling only the quadrupolar modes of the GW signal are sufficient (loss of detection rate $< 10\%$) for the detection of GWs with mass ratios $q\leq4$ using advanced GW observatories. Neglecting the effect of non-quadrupole modes will introduce systematic errors in the estimated parameters. The systematic errors are larger than the expected $1\,\sigma$ statistical errors for binaries with large, unequal masses ($q\gtrsim4, M \gtrsim 150 M_\odot$), for sky-averaged signal-to-noise ratios larger than $8$. We provide a summary of the regions in the parameter space where neglecting non-quadrupole modes will cause unacceptable loss of detection rates and unacceptably large systematic biases in the estimated parameters.Comment: 11 pages, 9 figures, submitted to Phys. Rev.

Gravitational waves: search results, data analysis and parameter estimation

The Amaldi 10 Parallel Session C2 on gravitational wave (GW) search results, data analysis and parameter estimation included three lively sessions of lectures by 13 presenters, and 34 posters. The talks and posters covered a huge range of material, including results and analysis techniques for ground-based GW detectors, targeting anticipated signals from different astrophysical sources: compact binary inspiral, merger and ringdown; GW bursts from intermediate mass binary black hole mergers, cosmic string cusps, core-collapse supernovae, and other unmodeled sources; continuous waves from spinning neutron stars; and a stochastic GW background. There was considerable emphasis on Bayesian techniques for estimating the parameters of coalescing compact binary systems from the gravitational waveforms extracted from the data from the advanced detector network. This included methods to distinguish deviations of the signals from what is expected in the context of General Relativity