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A Novel Method for Placement of Numerical Relativity Simulations Informed by NR-based Parameter Estimation

ORAL

Abstract



On the 21st of May 2019, the LIGO-Virgo-KAGRA Collaboration detected a gravitational wave signal from a massive, highly precessing binary black hole merger. While all the analyses with different gravitation wave models recovered similar parameters, the peaks of the posterior distributions were noticeably different for models that include different physics. In this work, we present results for GW190521 from a method that suggests new numerical relativity simulations based on a parameter estimation analysis using only numerical relativity waveforms. This method attempts to place new simulations by taking into account the part of parameter space relevant for a given event as well as the sparse part of parameter space in the existing numerical relativity grid. We then add these new simulations into the NR-based analysis and quantify the impact of these targeted simulations by assessing the change in the posterior.

Presenters

  • Jacob A Lange

    University of Texas at Austin

Authors

  • Jacob A Lange

    University of Texas at Austin

  • Michael Boyle

    Cornell University

  • Manuela Campanelli

    Rochester Institute of Technology

  • Andrea Ceja

    California State University, Fullerton

  • Deborah Ferguson

    University of Texas at Austin

  • James Healy

    Rochester Institute of Technology

  • Hector L Iglesias

    University of Texas at Austin

  • Aasim Z Jan

    University of Texas at Austin

  • Lawrence E Kidder

    Cornell University

  • Pablo Laguna

    University of Texas at Austin

  • Carlos O Lousto

    Rochester Institute of Technology

  • Geoffrey Lovelace

    California State University, Fullerton

  • Erick Martinez

    University of Texas at Austin

  • Ryan Nowicki

    University of Texas at Austin

  • Richard O'Shaughnessy

    Rochester Institute of Technology

  • Harald P Pfeiffer

    Max Planck Inst, Max Planck Institute for Gravitational Physics

  • Mark A Scheel

    Caltech

  • Deirdre M Shoemaker

    University of Texas at Austin

  • Daniel Tellez

    California State University, Fullerton

  • Saul A Teukolsky

    Cornell University

  • Yosef Zlochower

    Rochester Institute of Technology