Speaker: Jonathan Thompson (Cardiff U.)
Title: Modelling precession in gravitational waves through inspiral, merger and ringdown
Abstract:
As gravitational wave detectors increase in sensitivity, previously unmodelled physical effects will play an important role in advancing the accuracy of future gravitational wave models. For signals arising from precessing compact binaries, current models map non-precessing waveforms onto the precessing parameter space through a non-inertial rotation using Euler angles derived from the post-Newtonian dynamics of the inspiraling system. While these angles approximate well the motion of the orbital plane relative to the direction of total (fixed) angular momentum at early times or low frequencies of the signal, the morphology of these angles disagrees strongly with numerical relativity results through merger and ringdown, where the post-Newtonian approximation breaks down. We present the first model of these precession angles that has been tuned to precessing numerical relativity simulations through merger and ringdown, and discuss additional changes to the underlying non-precessing waveform needed to ensure accuracy for more challenging precessing binaries with higher mass ratios and spin magnitudes.
Room: ZOOM videoconference (contact justin.feng@tecnico.ulisboa.pt for URL)