TY - JOUR
T1 - Testing the no-hair nature of binary black holes using the consistency of multipolar gravitational radiation
AU - Islam, Tousif
AU - Mehta, Ajit Kumar
AU - Ghosh, Abhirup
AU - Varma, Vijay
AU - Ajith, Parameswaran
AU - Sathyaprakash, B. S.
N1 - Funding Information:
We thank Harald Pfeiffer, Bala Iyer, K. G. Arun, and Gregorio Carullo for useful discussions, and Chandra Kant Mishra for help with the numerical implementation of the waveform model used in this paper. This research was supported by the Indo-U.S. Centre for the Exploration of Extreme Gravity funded by the Indo-U.S. Science and Technology Forum (Grant No. IUSSTF/JC-029/2016). P. A.’s research was, in addition, supported by the Max Planck Society through a Max Planck Partner Group at ICTS-TIFR and by the Canadian Institute for Advanced Research through the CIFAR Azrieli Global Scholars program. B. S. S.’s research was supported by NSF Grants No. AST-1716394 and No. AST-1708146. Computations were performed at the ICTS cluster Alice.
Publisher Copyright:
© 2020 American Physical Society.
PY - 2020/1/14
Y1 - 2020/1/14
N2 - Gravitational-wave (GW) observations of binary black holes offer the best probes of the relativistic, strong-field regime of gravity. Gravitational radiation in the leading order is quadrupolar. However, nonquadrupole (higher order) modes make appreciable contribution to the radiation from binary black holes with large mass ratios and misaligned spins. The multipolar structure of the radiation is fully determined by the intrinsic parameters (masses and spin angular momenta of the companion black holes) of a binary in quasicircular orbit. Following our previous work [S. Dhanpal, A. Ghosh, A. K. Mehta, P. Ajith, and B. S. Sathyaprakash, Phys. Rev. D 99, 104056 (2019).PRVDAQ2470-001010.1103/PhysRevD.99.104056], we develop multiple ways of testing the consistency of the observed GW signal with the expected multipolar structure of radiation from binary black holes in general relativity. We call this a no-hair test of binary black holes as this is similar to testing the no-hair theorem for isolated black holes through mutual consistency of the quasinormal mode spectrum. We use Bayesian inference on simulated GW signals that are consistent/inconsistent with binary black holes in general relativity to demonstrate the power of the proposed tests. We also make estimate systematic errors arising as a result of neglecting companion spins.
AB - Gravitational-wave (GW) observations of binary black holes offer the best probes of the relativistic, strong-field regime of gravity. Gravitational radiation in the leading order is quadrupolar. However, nonquadrupole (higher order) modes make appreciable contribution to the radiation from binary black holes with large mass ratios and misaligned spins. The multipolar structure of the radiation is fully determined by the intrinsic parameters (masses and spin angular momenta of the companion black holes) of a binary in quasicircular orbit. Following our previous work [S. Dhanpal, A. Ghosh, A. K. Mehta, P. Ajith, and B. S. Sathyaprakash, Phys. Rev. D 99, 104056 (2019).PRVDAQ2470-001010.1103/PhysRevD.99.104056], we develop multiple ways of testing the consistency of the observed GW signal with the expected multipolar structure of radiation from binary black holes in general relativity. We call this a no-hair test of binary black holes as this is similar to testing the no-hair theorem for isolated black holes through mutual consistency of the quasinormal mode spectrum. We use Bayesian inference on simulated GW signals that are consistent/inconsistent with binary black holes in general relativity to demonstrate the power of the proposed tests. We also make estimate systematic errors arising as a result of neglecting companion spins.
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U2 - 10.1103/PhysRevD.101.024032
DO - 10.1103/PhysRevD.101.024032
M3 - Article
AN - SCOPUS:85078342109
SN - 2470-0010
VL - 101
JO - Physical Review D
JF - Physical Review D
IS - 2
M1 - 024032
ER -