Measuring the spin of black holes in binary systems using gravitational waves

Compact binary coalescences are the most promising sources of gravitational waves (GWs) for ground based detectors. Binary systems containing one or two spinning black holes are particularly interesting due to spin-orbit (and eventual spin-spin) interactions, and the opportunity of measuring spins directly through GW observations. In this letter we analyze simulated signals emitted by spinning binaries with several values of masses, spins, orientation, and signal-to-noise ratio. We find that spin magnitudes and tilt angles can be estimated to accuracy of a few percent for neutron star--black hole systems and $\sim$ 5-30% for black hole binaries. In contrast, the difference in the azimuth angles of the spins, which may be used to check if spins are locked into resonant configurations, cannot be constrained. We observe that the best performances are obtained when the line of sight is perpendicular to the system's total angular momentum, and that a sudden change of behavior occurs when a system is observed from angles such that the plane of the orbit can be seen both from above and below during the time the signal is in band. This study suggests that the measurement of black hole spin by means of GWs can be as precise as what can be obtained from X-ray binaries.Comment: 4 figures, Version accepted for publication on PR

PESummary: the code agnostic Parameter Estimation Summary page builder

PESummary is a Python software package for processing and visualising data from any parameter estimation code. The easy to use Python executable scripts and extensive online documentation has resulted in PESummary becoming a key component in the international gravitational-wave analysis toolkit. PESummary has been developed to be more than just a post-processing tool with all outputs fully self-contained. PESummary has become central to making gravitational-wave inference analysis open and easily reproducible.Comment: 26 pages, 5 figures; resubmission following reviewers comment

Parameter estimation for heavy binary-black holes with networks of second-generation gravitational-wave detectors

The era of gravitational-wave astronomy has started with the discovery of the binary black hole coalescences (BBH) GW150914 and GW151226 by the LIGO instruments. These systems allowed for the first direct measurement of masses and spins of black holes. The component masses in each of the systems have been estimated with uncertainties of over 10\%, with only weak constraints on the spin magnitude and orientation. In this paper we show how these uncertainties will be typical for this type of source when using advanced detectors. Focusing in particular on heavy BBH of masses similar to GW150914, we find that typical uncertainties in the estimation of the source-frame component masses will be around 40\%. We also find that for most events the magnitude of the component spins will be estimated poorly: for only 10\% of the systems the uncertainties in the spin magnitude of the primary (secondary) BH will be below 0.7 (0.8). Conversely, the effective spin along the angular momentum can be estimated more precisely than either spins, with uncertainties below 0.16 for 10\% of the systems. We also quantify how often large or negligible primary spins can be excluded, and how often the sign of the effective spin can be measured. We show how the angle between the spin and the orbital angular momentum can only seldom be measured with uncertainties below 60$^\circ$. We then investigate how the measurement of spin parameters depends on the inclination angle and the total mass of the source. We find that when precession is present, uncertainties are smaller for systems observed close to edge-on. Contrarily to what happens for low-mass, inspiral dominated, sources, for heavy BBH we find that large spins aligned with the orbital angular momentum can be measured with small uncertainty. We also show how spin uncertainties increase with the total mass. Finally...Comment: 18 pages, 28 figures. The abstract is cut in the Arxiv metadata. Refer to PDF. Version accepted by PR

Black-hole Spectroscopy by Making Full Use of Gravitational-Wave Modeling

The Kerr nature of a compact-object-coalescence remnant can be unveiled by observing multiple quasi-normal modes (QNMs) in the post-merger signal. Current methods to achieve this goal rely on matching the data with a superposition of exponentially damped sinusoids with amplitudes fitted to numerical-relativity (NR) simulations of binary black-hole (BBH) mergers. These models presume the ability to correctly estimate the time at which the gravitational-wave (GW) signal starts to be dominated by the QNMs of a perturbed BH. Here we show that this difficulty can be overcome by using multipolar inspiral-merger-ringdown waveforms, calibrated to NR simulations, as already developed within the effective-one-body formalism (EOBNR). We build a parameterized (nonspinning) EOBNR waveform model in which the QNM complex frequencies are free parameters (pEOBNR), and use Bayesian analysis to study its effectiveness in measuring QNMs in GW150914, and in synthetic GW signals of BBHs injected in Gaussian noise. We find that using the pEOBNR model gives, in general, stronger constraints compared to the ones obtained when using a sum of damped sinusoids and using Bayesian model selection, we also show that the pEOBNR model can successfully be employed to find evidence for deviations from General Relativity in the ringdown signal. Since the pEOBNR model properly includes time and phase shifts among QNMs, it is also well suited to consistently combine information from several observations --- e.g., we find on the order of $\sim 30$ GW150914-like BBH events would be needed for Advanced LIGO and Virgo at design sensitivity to measure the fundamental frequencies of both the $(2,2)$ and $(3,3)$ modes, and the decay time of the $(2,2)$ mode with an accuracy of $\lesssim 5\%$ at the 2\mbox{-}\sigma level, thus allowing to test the BH's no-hair conjecture.Comment: 12 pages. v2: references added, discussion improved and 3 new figures. Matches published versio

Parameter Estimation with a spinning multi-mode waveform model: IMRPhenomHM

Gravitational waves from compact binary coalescence sources can be decomposed into spherical-harmonic multipoles, the dominant being the quadrupole ($\ell=2, m=\pm2$) modes. The contribution of sub-dominant modes towards total signal power increases with increasing binary mass ratio and source inclination to the detector. It is well-known that in these cases neglecting higher modes could lead to measurement biases, but these have not yet been quantified with a higher-mode model that includes spin effects. In this study, we use the multi-mode aligned-spin phenomenological waveform model IMRPhenomHM to investigate the effects of including multi-mode content in estimating source parameters and contrast the results with using a quadrupole-only model (IMRPhenomD). We use as sources IMRPhenomHM and hybrid EOB-NR waveforms over a range of mass-ratio and inclination combinations, and recover the parameters with IMRPhenomHM and IMRPhenomD. These allow us to quantify the accuracy of parameter measurements using a multi-mode model, the biases incurred when using a quadrupole-only model to recover full (multi-mode) signals, and the systematic errors in the IMRPhenomHM model. We see that the parameters recovered by multi-mode templates are more precise for all non-zero inclinations as compared to quadrupole templates. For multi-mode injections, IMRPhenomD recovers biased parameters for non-zero inclinations with lower likelihood while IMRPhenomHM recovered parameters are accurate for most cases, and if a bias exists, it can be explained as a combined effect of observational priors and (in the case of hybrid-NR signals) waveform inaccuracies. For cases where IMRPhenomHM recovers biased parameters, the bias is always smaller than the corresponding IMRPhenomD recovery, and we conclude that IMRPhenomHM will be sufficiently accurate to allow unbiased measurements for most GW observations.Comment: 14 pages, 7 figure

Density estimation with Gaussian processes for gravitational-wave posteriors

The properties of black-hole and neutron-star binaries are extracted from gravitational-wave signals using Bayesian inference. This involves evaluating a multi-dimensional posterior probability function with stochastic sampling. The marginal probability density distributions from which the samples are drawn are usually interpolated with kernel density estimators. Since most post-processing analysis within the field is based on these parameter estimation products, interpolation accuracy of the marginals is essential. In this work, we propose a new method combining histograms and Gaussian Processes as an alternative technique to fit arbitrary combinations of samples from the source parameters. This method comes with several advantages such as flexible interpolation of non-Gaussian correlations, Bayesian estimate of uncertainty, and efficient re-sampling with Hamiltonian Monte Carlo

Basic Parameter Estimation of Binary Neutron Star Systems by the Advanced LIGO/Virgo Network

Within the next five years, it is expected that the Advanced LIGO/Virgo network will have reached a sensitivity sufficient to enable the routine detection of gravitational waves. Beyond the initial detection, the scientific promise of these instruments relies on the effectiveness of our physical parameter estimation capabilities. The majority of this effort has been towards the detection and characterization of gravitational waves from compact binary coalescence, e.g. the coalescence of binary neutron stars. While several previous studies have investigated the accuracy of parameter estimation with advanced detectors, the majority have relied on approximation techniques such as the Fisher Matrix. Here we report the statistical uncertainties that will be achievable for optimal detection candidates (SNR = 20) using the full parameter estimation machinery developed by the LIGO/Virgo Collaboration via Markov-Chain Monte Carlo methods. We find the recovery of the individual masses to be fractionally within 9% (15%) at the 68% (95%) credible intervals for equal-mass systems, and within 1.9% (3.7%) for unequal-mass systems. We also find that the Advanced LIGO/Virgo network will constrain the locations of binary neutron star mergers to a median uncertainty of 5.1 deg^2 (13.5 deg^2) on the sky. This region is improved to 2.3 deg^2 (6 deg^2) with the addition of the proposed LIGO India detector to the network. We also report the average uncertainties on the luminosity distances and orbital inclinations of ideal detection candidates that can be achieved by different network configurations.Comment: Second version: 15 pages, 9 figures, accepted in Ap