A Catalog-Wide Study of Gravitational-Wave Residuals in GWTC-4 and GWTC-5

Abstract

Improved sensitivity of the LIGO-Virgo-KAGRA detectors has enabled the accumulation of a large gravitational-wave event catalog, providing an opportunity for catalog-wide residual analyses to assess waveform-model performance. We study GWTC-4 and GWTC-5 events with signal-to-noise ratio $>12$ in at least one detector, applying three goodness-of-fit tests to the normalized Q-transform energies of whitened residuals obtained by subtracting the IMRPhenomXPHM and SEOBNRv5PHM waveform models. Across the catalog, the residuals are consistent with Gaussian noise, with no evidence of systematic deviations in either multi-detector events or valid single-detector events. For events exhibiting strong model dependence in parameter estimation, variations between waveform models likewise do not produce persistent residual structures. These results demonstrate that parameter-estimation biases associated with waveform modeling do not necessarily manifest as detectable features in the residuals. Residual analyses therefore provide a complementary diagnostic in data space for validating gravitational-wave waveform models within the detector sensitivity.