Statistical and systematic errors for gravitational-wave inspiral signals: A principal component analysis

Ohme, Frank, Nielsen, Alex B., Keppel, Drew and Lundgren, Andrew 2013. Statistical and systematic errors for gravitational-wave inspiral signals: A principal component analysis. Physical Review D 88 (4) , 042002. 10.1103/PhysRevD.88.042002

Full text not available from this repository.

Abstract

Identifying the source parameters from a gravitational-wave measurement alone is limited by our ability to discriminate signals from different sources and the accuracy of the waveform family employed in the search. Here we address both issues in the framework of an adapted coordinate system that allows for linear Fisher-matrix–type calculations of waveform differences that are both accurate and computationally very efficient. We investigate statistical errors by using principal component analysis of the post-Newtonian (PN) expansion coefficients, which is well conditioned despite the Fisher matrix becoming ill conditioned for larger numbers of parameters. We identify which combinations of physical parameters are most effectively measured by gravitational-wave detectors for systems of neutron stars and black holes with aligned spin. We confirm the expectation that the dominant parameter of the inspiral waveform is the chirp mass. The next dominant parameter depends on a combination of the spin and the symmetric mass ratio. In addition, we can study the systematic effect of various spin contributions to the PN phasing within the same parametrization, showing that the inclusion of spin-orbit corrections up to next-to-leading order, but not necessarily of spin-spin contributions, is crucial for an accurate inspiral waveform model. This understanding of the waveform structure throughout the parameter space is important to set up an efficient search strategy and correctly interpret future gravitational-wave observations.

Item Type:	Article
Date Type:	Publication
Status:	Published
Schools:	Physics and Astronomy
Subjects:	Q Science > QB Astronomy
Publisher:	American Physical Society
ISSN:	1550-7998
Funders:	STFC Grant No. ST/I001085/1
Last Modified:	31 Jul 2020 01:42
URI:	https://orca.cardiff.ac.uk/id/eprint/50323

Citation Data

Cited 41 times in Scopus. View in Scopus. Powered By Scopus® Data

Actions (repository staff only)

Edit Item