Measuring gravitational waves from binary black hole coalescences. I. Signal to noise for inspiral, merger, and ringdown

Éanna É. Flanagan and Scott A. Hughes
Phys. Rev. D 57, 4535 – Published 15 April 1998
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Abstract

We estimate the expected signal-to-noise ratios (SNRs) from the three phases (inspiral, merger, and ringdown) of coalescing binary black holes (BBHs) for initial and advanced ground-based interferometers (LIGO-VIRGO) and for the space-based interferometer LISA. Ground-based interferometers can do moderate SNR (a few tens), moderate accuracy studies of BBH coalescences in the mass range of a few to about 2000 solar masses; LISA can do high SNR (of order 104), high accuracy studies in the mass range of about 105108 solar masses. BBHs might well be the first sources detected by LIGO-VIRGO: they are visible to much larger distances—up to 500 Mpc by initial interferometers—than coalescing neutron star binaries (heretofore regarded as the “bread and butter” workhorse source for LIGO-VIRGO, visible to about 30 Mpc by initial interferometers). Low-mass BBHs (up to 50M for initial LIGO interferometers, 100M for advanced, 106M for LISA) are best searched for via their well-understood inspiral waves; higher mass BBHs must be searched for via their poorly understood merger waves and/or their well-understood ringdown waves. A matched filtering search for massive BBHs based on ringdown waves should be capable of finding BBHs in the mass range of about 100M700M out to 200Mpc for initial LIGO interferometers, and in the mass range of 200M to 3000M out to about z=1 for advanced interferometers. The required number of templates is of the order of 6000 or less. Searches based on merger waves could increase the number of detected massive BBHs by a factor of the order of 10 over those found from inspiral and ringdown waves, without detailed knowledge of the waveform shapes, using a noise monitoring search algorithm which we describe. A full set of merger templates from numerical relativity simulations could further increase the number of detected BBHs by an additional factor of up to 4.

  • Received 17 January 1997

DOI:https://doi.org/10.1103/PhysRevD.57.4535

©1998 American Physical Society

Authors & Affiliations

Éanna É. Flanagan

  • Cornell University, Newman Laboratory, Ithaca, New York 14853-5001

Scott A. Hughes

  • Theoretical Astrophysics, California Institute of Technology, Pasadena, California 91125

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Vol. 57, Iss. 8 — 15 April 1998

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