The third Gravitational-Wave Transient Catalog (GWTC-3) contains 90 binary
coalescence candidates detected by the LIGO-Virgo-KAGRA Collaboration (LVK). We
provide a re-analysis of binary black hole (BBH) events using a recently
developed numerical relativity (NR) waveform surrogate model, NRSur7dq4, that
includes all ℓ≤4 spin-weighted spherical harmonic modes as well as
the complete physical effects of precession. Properties of the remnant black
holes' (BH's) mass, spin vector, and kick vector are found using an associated
remnant surrogate model NRSur7dq4Remnant. Both NRSur7dq4 and NRSur7dq4Remnant
models have errors comparable to numerical relativity simulations and allow for
high-accuracy parameter estimates. We restrict our analysis to 47 BBH events
that fall within the regime of validity of NRSur7dq4 (mass ratios greater than
1/6 and total masses greater than 60M⊙​). While for most of these
events our results match the LVK analyses that were obtained using the
semi-analytical models such as IMRPhenomXPHM and SEOBNRv4PHM, we find that for
more than 20\% of events the NRSur7dq4 model recovers noticeably different
measurements of black hole properties like the masses and spins, as well as
extrinsic properties like the binary inclination and distance. For instance,
GW150914_095045 exhibits noticeable differences in spin precession and spin
magnitude measurements. Other notable findings include one event
(GW191109_010717) that constrains the effective spin χeff​ to be
negative at a 99.3\% credible level and two events (GW191109_010717 and
GW200129_065458) with well-constrained kick velocities. Furthermore, compared
to the models used in the LVK analyses, NRSur7dq4 recovers a larger
signal-to-noise ratio and/or Bayes factors for several events.Comment: Posteriors and animations are made publicly available at
https://nrsur-catalog.github.io/NRSurCat-