Kavli Affiliate: Scott A. Hughes
| Summary:
We present BHPTNRSur2dq1e3, a reduced order surrogate model of gravitational waves emitted from binary black hole (BBH) systems in the comparable to large mass ratio regime with aligned spin ($χ_1$) on the heavier mass ($m_1$). We trained this model on waveform data generated from point particle black hole perturbation theory (ppBHPT) with mass ratios varying from $3 leq q leq 1000$ and spins from $-0.8 leq χ_1 leq 0.8$. The waveforms are $13,500 m_1$ long and include all spin-weighted spherical harmonic modes up to $ell = 4$ except the $(4,1)$ and $m = 0$ modes. We find that for binaries with $χ_1 lesssim -0.5$, retrograde quasi-normal modes are significantly excited, thereby complicating the modeling process. To overcome this issue, we introduce a domain decomposition approach to model the inspiral and merger-ringdown portion of the signal separately. The resulting model can faithfully reproduce ppBHPT waveforms with a median time-domain mismatch error of $8 times 10^-5$. We then calibrate our model with numerical relativity (NR) data in the comparable mass regime $(3 leq q leq 10)$. By comparing with spin-aligned BBH NR simulations at $q = 15$, we find that the dominant quadrupolar (subdominant) modes agree to better than $approx 10^-3 (approx 10^-2)$ when using a time-domain mismatch error, where the largest source of calibration error comes from the transition-to-plunge and ringdown approximations of perturbation theory. Mismatch errors are below $approx 10^-2$ for systems with mass ratios between $6 leq q leq 15$ and typically get smaller at larger mass ratio. Our two models – both the ppBHPT waveform model and the NR-calibrated ppBHPT model – will be publicly available through gwsurrogate and the Black Hole Perturbation Toolkit packages.
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