arXiv subjects

Alex B. Nielsen

Publications and source records attributed to Alex B. Nielsen.

At least 37 records · Page 2Linked to original sources

arXiv2018

Observational tests of the black hole area increase law

The black hole area theorem implies that when two black holes merge, the area of the final black hole should be greater than the sum of the areas of the two original black holes. We examine how this prediction can be tested with gravitational-wave observations of binary black holes. By separately fitting the early inspiral and final ringdown stages, we calculate the posterior distributions for the masses and spins of the two initial and the final black holes. This yields posterior distributions for the change in the area and thus a statistical test of the validity of the area increase law. We illustrate this method with a GW150914-like binary black hole waveform calculated using numerical relativity, and detector sensitivities representative of both the first observing run and the design configuration of Advanced LIGO. We obtain a $\sim74.6\%$ probability that the simulated signal is consistent with the area theorem with current sensitivity, improving to $\sim99.9\%$ when Advanced LIGO reaches design sensitivity. An important ingredient in our test is a method of estimating when the post-merger signal is well-fit by a damped sinusoid ringdown waveform.

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arXiv2018

Low significance of evidence for black hole echoes in gravitational wave data

Recent detections of merging black holes allow observational tests of the nature of these objects. In some proposed models, non-trivial structure at or near the black hole horizon could lead to echo signals in gravitational wave data. Recently, Abedi et al. claimed tentative evidence for repeating damped echo signals following the gravitational-wave signals of the binary black hole merger events recorded in the first observational period of the Advanced LIGO interferometers. We reanalyse the same data, addressing some of the shortcomings of their method using more background data and a modified procedure. We find a reduced statistical significance for the claims of evidence for echoes, calculating increased p-values for the null hypothesis of echo-free noise. The reduced significance is entirely consistent with noise, and so we conclude that the analysis of Abedi et al. does not provide any observational evidence for the existence of Planck-scale structure at black hole horizons.

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arXiv2018

Testing general relativity using gravitational wave signals from the inspiral, merger and ringdown of binary black holes

Advanced LIGO's recent observations of gravitational waves (GWs) from merging binary black holes have opened up a unique laboratory to test general relativity (GR) in the highly relativistic regime. One of the tests used to establish the consistency of the first LIGO event with a binary black hole merger predicted by GR was the inspiral-merger-ringdown consistency test. This involves inferring the mass and spin of the remnant black hole from the inspiral (low-frequency) part of the observed signal and checking for the consistency of the inferred parameters with the same estimated from the post-inspiral (high-frequency) part of the signal. Based on the observed rate of binary black hole mergers, we expect the advanced GW observatories to observe hundreds of binary black hole mergers every year when operating at their design sensitivities, most of them with modest signal to noise ratios (SNRs). Anticipating such observations, this paper shows how constraints from a large number of events with modest SNRs can be combined to produce strong constraints on deviations from GR. Using kludge modified GR waveforms, we demonstrate how this test could identify certain types of deviations from GR if such deviations are present in the signal waveforms. We also study the robustness of this test against reasonable variations of a variety of different analysis parameters.

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arXiv2018

Dynamics of marginally trapped surfaces in a binary black hole merger: Growth and approach to equilibrium

The behavior of quasi-local black hole horizons in a binary black hole merger is studied numerically. We compute the horizon multipole moments, fluxes and other quantities on black hole horizons throughout the merger. These lead to a better qualitative and quantitative understanding of the coalescence of two black holes; how the final black hole is formed, initially grows and then settles down to a Kerr black hole. We calculate the rate at which the final black hole approaches equilibrium in a fully non-perturbative situation and identify a time at which the linear ringdown phase begins. Finally, we provide additional support for the conjecture that fields at the horizon are correlated with fields in the wave-zone by comparing the in-falling gravitational wave flux at the horizon to the outgoing flux as estimated from the gravitational waveform.

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arXiv2018

Reducing the number of templates for aligned-spin compact binary coalescence gravitational wave searches using metric-agnostic template nudging

Efficient multi-dimensional template placement is crucial in computationally intensive matched-filtering searches for Gravitational Waves (GWs). Here, we implement the Neighboring Cell Algorithm (NCA) to improve the detection volume of an existing Compact Binary Coalescence (CBC) template bank. This algorithm has already been successfully applied for a binary millisecond pulsar search in data from the Fermi satellite. It repositions templates from over-dense regions to under-dense regions and reduces the number of templates that would have been required by a stochastic method to achieve the same detection volume. Our method is readily generalizable to other CBC parameter spaces. Here we apply this method to the aligned--single-spin neutron-star--black-hole binary coalescence inspiral-merger-ringdown gravitational wave parameter space. We show that the template nudging algorithm can attain the equivalent effectualness of the stochastic method with 12% fewer templates.

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arXiv2017

Coincident detection significance in multimessenger astronomy

We derive a Bayesian criterion for assessing whether signals observed in two separate data sets originate from a common source. The Bayes factor for a common vs. unrelated origin of signals includes an overlap integral of the posterior distributions over the common source parameters. Focusing on multimessenger gravitational-wave astronomy, we apply the method to the spatial and temporal association of independent gravitational-wave and electromagnetic (or neutrino) observations. As an example, we consider the coincidence between the recently discovered gravitational-wave signal GW170817 from a binary neutron star merger and the gamma-ray burst GRB 170817A: we find that the common source model is enormously favored over a model describing them as unrelated signals.

astro-ph.HE↗

arXiv2017

A stochastic template bank for gravitational wave searches for precessing neutron-star--black-hole coalescence events

Gravitational wave searches to date have largely focused on non-precessing systems. Including precession effects greatly increases the number of templates to be searched over. This leads to a corresponding increase in the computational cost and can increase the false alarm rate of a realistic search. On the other hand, there might be astrophysical systems that are entirely missed by non-precessing searches. In this paper we consider the problem of constructing a template bank using stochastic methods for neutron-star--black-hole binaries allowing for precession, but with the restrictions that the orientation of the total angular momentum of the binary is pointing towards the detector and that the neutron-star spin is negligible relative to that of the black-hole. We quantify the number of templates required for the search, and we explicitly construct the template bank. We show that despite the large number of templates, stochastic methods can be adapted to solve the problem. We quantify the parameter space region over which the non-precessing search might miss signals.

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arXiv2017

Conformal Killing horizons and their thermodynamics

Certain dynamical black hole solutions can be mapped to static spacetimes by conformal metric transformations. This mapping provides a physical link between the conformal Killing horizon of the dynamical black hole and a Killing horizon of the static spacetime. We show how this conformal relation can be used to derive thermodynamic properties for the dynamical black holes. Although these horizons are defined quasi-locally and can be located by local experiments, they are distinct from other popular notions of quasi-local horizons such as apparent horizons. Thus in the dynamical Vaidya spacetime describing constant accretion of null dust, the conformal Killing horizon, which is null by construction, is the natural horizon to describe the black hole.

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arXiv2017

Testing pseudo-complex general relativity with gravitational waves

We show how the model of pseudo-complex general relativity can be tested using gravitational wave signals from coalescing compact objects. The model, which agrees with Einstein gravity in the weak-field limit, diverges dramatically in the near-horizon regime, with certain parameter ranges excluding the existence of black holes. We show that simple limits can be placed on the model in both the inspiral and ringdown phase of coalescing compact objects. We discuss further how these bounds relate to current observational limits. In particular, for minimal scenarios previously considered in the literature, gravitational wave observations are able to constrain pseudo-complex general relativity parameters to values that require the existence of black hole horizons.

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arXiv2017

Minimum energy and the end of the inspiral in the post-Newtonian approximation

The early inspiral phase of a compact binary coalescence is well modelled by the post-Newtonian (PN) approximation to the orbital energy and gravitational wave flux. The transition from the inspiral phase to the plunge can be defined by the minimum energy circular orbit (MECO). In the extreme mass-ratio limit, up to the highest PN order known, the PN energy equals the energy of the exact Kerr solution. However, for comparable-mass systems the MECO of the PN energy does not exist when bodies have large spins. By including the exact Kerr limit and recently published post-Newtonian terms we extract a well-defined minimum of the orbital energy beyond which the plunge or merger occurs. We study the hybrid condition for a number of cases of both black hole and neutron stars and compare to other commonly employed definitions. Our method can be used for any known order of the post-Newtonian series and enables the MECO condition to be used to define the end of the inspiral phase for highly spinning, comparable mass systems.

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arXiv2016

Comments on: "Echoes from the abyss: Evidence for Planck-scale structure at black hole horizons"

Recently, Abedi, Dykaar and Afshordi claimed evidence for a repeating damped echo signal following the binary black hole merger gravitational-wave events recorded in the first observational period of the Advanced LIGO interferometers. We discuss the methods of data analysis and significance estimation leading to this claim, and identify several important shortcomings. We conclude that their analysis does not provide significant observational evidence for the existence of Planck-scale structure at black hole horizons, and suggest renewed analysis correcting for these shortcomings.

gr-qc↗

arXiv2016

The PyCBC search for gravitational waves from compact binary coalescence

We describe the PyCBC search for gravitational waves from compact-object binary coalescences in advanced gravitational-wave detector data. The search was used in the first Advanced LIGO observing run and unambiguously identified two black hole binary mergers, GW150914 and GW151226. At its core, the PyCBC search performs a matched-filter search for binary merger signals using a bank of gravitational-wave template waveforms. We provide a complete description of the search pipeline including the steps used to mitigate the effects of noise transients in the data, identify candidate events and measure their statistical significance. The analysis is able to measure false-alarm rates as low as one per million years, required for confident detection of signals. Using data from initial LIGO's sixth science run, we show that the new analysis reduces the background noise in the search, giving a 30% increase in sensitive volume for binary neutron star systems over previous searches.

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arXiv2016

Testing general relativity using golden black-hole binaries

The coalescences of stellar-mass black-hole binaries through their inspiral, merger, and ringdown are among the most promising sources for ground-based gravitational-wave (GW) detectors. If a GW signal is observed with sufficient signal-to-noise ratio, the masses and spins of the black holes can be estimated from just the inspiral part of the signal. Using these estimates of the initial parameters of the binary, the mass and spin of the final black hole can be uniquely predicted making use of general-relativistic numerical simulations. In addition, the mass and spin of the final black hole can be independently estimated from the merger--ringdown part of the signal. If the binary black hole dynamics is correctly described by general relativity (GR), these independent estimates have to be consistent with each other. We present a Bayesian implementation of such a test of general relativity, which allows us to combine the constraints from multiple observations. Using kludge modified GR waveforms, we demonstrate that this test can detect sufficiently large deviations from GR, and outline the expected constraints from upcoming GW observations using the second-generation of ground-based GW detectors.

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arXiv2016

On the distribution of stellar-sized black hole spins

Black hole spin will have a large impact on searches for gravitational waves with advanced detectors. While only a few stellar mass black hole spins have been measured using X-ray techniques, gravitational wave detectors have the capacity to greatly increase the statistics of black hole spin measurements. We show what we might learn from these measurements and how the black hole spin values are influenced by their formation channels.

astro-ph.HE↗

arXiv2015

Impact of precession on aligned-spin searches for neutron-star--black-hole binaries

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 spin and the orbital angular momentum, which could lead to precession of the orbital plane during the inspiral and a consequent loss in detection efficiency if precession is ignored. This work explores the effect of spin misalignment on a search pipeline that completely neglects spin effects and on a recently-developed pipeline that only includes aligned-spin effects. Using synthetic but realistic data, which could reasonably represent the first scientific runs of advanced-LIGO detectors, the relative sensitivities of both pipelines are shown for different assumptions about black-hole spin magnitude and alignment with the orbital angular momentum. Despite the inclusion of aligned-spin effects, the loss in signal-to-noise ratio due to precession can be as large as $40\%$, but this has a limited impact on the overall detection rate: even if precession is a predominant feature of neutron-star--black-hole binaries, an aligned-spin search pipeline can still detect at least half of the signals compared to an idealized generic precessing search pipeline.

gr-qc↗

arXiv2014

Implementing a search for aligned-spin neutron star -- black hole systems with advanced ground based gravitational wave detectors

We study the effect of spins on searches for gravitational waves from compact binary coalescences in realistic simulated early advanced LIGO data. We construct a detection pipeline including matched filtering, signal-based vetoes, a coincidence test between different detectors, and an estimate of the rate of background events. We restrict attention to neutron star--black hole (NS-BH) binary systems, and we compare a search using non-spinning templates to one using templates that include spins aligned with the orbital angular momentum. To run the searches we implement the binary inspiral matched-filter computation in PyCBC, a new software toolkit for gravitational-wave data analysis. We find that the inclusion of aligned-spin effects significantly increases the astrophysical reach of the search. Considering astrophysical NS-BH systems with non-precessing black hole spins, for dimensionless spin components along the orbital angular momentum uniformly distributed in $(-1, 1)$, the sensitive volume of the search with aligned-spin templates is increased by $\sim 50\%$ compared to the non-spinning search; for signals with aligned spins uniformly distributed in the range $(0.7,1)$, the increase in sensitive volume is a factor of $\sim 10$.

gr-qc↗

arXiv2013

Advanced LIGO's ability to detect apparent violations of the cosmic censorship conjecture and the no-hair theorem through compact binary coalescence detections

We study the ability of the advanced Laser Interferometer Gravitational-wave Observatory (aLIGO) to detect apparent violations of the cosmic censorship conjecture and the no-hair theorem. The cosmic censorship conjecture, which is believed to be true in the theory of general relativity, limits the spin-to-mass-squared ratio of a Kerr black hole. The no-hair theorem, which is also believed to be true in the theory of general relativity, suggests a particular value for the tidal Love number of a non-rotating black hole. Using the Fisher matrix formalism, we examine the measurability of the spin and tidal deformability of compact binary systems involving at least one putative black hole. Using parameter measurement errors and correlations obtained from the Fisher matrix, we determine the smallest detectable violation of bounds implied by the cosmic censorship conjecture and the no-hair theorem. We examine the effect of excluding unphysical areas of parameter space when determining the smallest detectable apparent violations, and we examine the effect of different post-Newtonian corrections to the amplitude of the compact binary coalescence gravitational waveform. In addition, we perform a brief study of how the recently calculated 3.0 pN and 3.5 pN spin-orbit corrections to the phase affect spin and mass parameter measurability. We find that physical priors on the symmetric mass ratio and higher harmonics in the gravitational waveform could significantly affect the ability of aLIGO to investigate cosmic censorship and the no-hair theorem for certain systems.

gr-qc↗

arXiv2013

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

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.

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