Searching for Gravitational Waves from the Inspiral of Precessing Binary Systems: Problems with Current Waveforms

In binary-black-hole systems where the black-hole spins are misaligned with the orbital angular momentum, precession effects leave characteristic modulations in the emitted gravitational waveform. Here, we investigate where in the parameter space we will be able to accurately identify precession, for likely observations over coming LIGO-Virgo-KAGRA observing runs. Despite the large number of parameters that characterise a precessing binary, we perform a large scale systematic...

Current searches for compact binary mergers by ground-based gravitational-wave detectors assume for simplicity the two bodies are not spinning. If the binary contains compact objects with significant spin, then this can reduce the sensitivity of these searches, particularly for black hole--neutron star binaries. In this paper we investigate the effect of neglecting precession on the sensitivity of searches for spinning binaries using non-spinning waveform models. We demonstra...

Gravitational waves (GWs) emitted by generic black-hole binaries show a rich structure that directly reflects the complex dynamics introduced by the precession of the orbital plane, which poses a real challenge to the development of generic waveform models. Recent progress in modelling these signals relies on an approximate decoupling between the non-precessing secular inspiral and a precession-induced rotation. However, the latter depends in general on all physical parameter...

The inspiral and merger of two orbiting black holes is among the most promising sources for the first (hopefully imminent) direct detection of gravitational waves (GWs), and measurements of these signals could provide a wealth of information about astrophysics, fundamental physics and cosmology. Detection and measurement require a theoretical description of the GW signals from all possible black-hole-binary configurations, which can include complicated precession effects due ...

Detection template families (DTFs) are built to capture the essential features of true gravitational waveforms using a small set of phenomenological waveform parameters. Buonanno, Chen, and Vallisneri [Phys. Rev. D 67, 104025 (2003)] proposed the ``BCV2'' DTF to perform computationally efficient searches for signals from precessing binaries of compact stellar objects. Here we test the signal-matching performance of the BCV2 DTF for asymmetric--mass-ratio binaries, and specifi...

One of the greatest theoretical challenges in the build-up to the era of second-generation gravitational-wave detectors is the modeling of generic binary waveforms. We introduce an approximation that has the potential to significantly simplify this problem. We show that generic precessing-binary inspiral waveforms (covering a seven-dimensional space of intrinsic parameters) can be mapped to a two-dimensional space of non-precessing binaries, characterized by the mass ratio an...

Current searches for gravitational waves from compact-object binaries with the LIGO and Virgo observatories employ waveform models with spins aligned (or anti-aligned) with the orbital angular momentum. Here, we derive a new statistic to search for compact objects carrying generic (precessing) spins. Applying this statistic, we construct banks of both aligned- and generic-spin templates for binary black holes and neutron-star--black-hole binaries, and compare the effectualnes...

It is customary to use a precessing convention, based on Newtonian orbital angular momentum ${\bf L}_{\rm N}$, to model inspiral gravitational waves from generic spinning compact binaries. A key feature of such a precessing convention is its ability to remove all spin precession induced modulations from the orbital phase evolution. However, this convention usually employs a post-Newtonian (PN) accurate precessional equation, appropriate for the PN accurate orbital angular mom...

Gravitational-wave signals from compact binary coalescences are most efficiently identified through matched filter searches, which match the data against a pre-generated bank of gravitational-wave templates. Although different techniques for performing the matched filter, as well as generating the template bank, exist, currently all modelled gravitational-wave searches use templates that restrict the component spins to be aligned (or anti-aligned) with the orbital angular mom...

The inclusion of aligned-spin effects in gravitational-wave search pipelines for neutron-star--black-hole binary coalescence has been shown to increase the astrophysical reach with respect to search methods where spins are neglected completely, under astrophysically reasonable assumptions about black-hole spins. However, theoretical considerations and population synthesis models suggest that many of these binaries may have a significant misalignment between the black-hole spi...