Constraining black-hole binary spin precession and nutation with sequential prior conditioning
Year: 2022
Type: article
Abstract: We investigate the detectability of subdominant spin effects in merging black-hole binaries using current gravitational-wave data. Using a phenomenological model that separates the spin dynamics into precession (azimuthal motion) and nutation (polar motion), we present constraints on the resulting amplitudes and frequencies. We also explore current constraints on the spin morphologies, indicating if binaries are trapped near spin-orbit resonances. We dissect such weak effects from the signals using a sequential prior conditioning approach, where parameters are progressively re-sampled from their posterior distribution. This allows us to investigate whether the data contain additional information beyond what is already provided by quantities that are better measured, namely the masses and the effective spin. For the current catalog of events, we find no significant measurements of weak spin effects such as nutation and spin-orbit locking. We synthesize a source with a high nutational amplitude and show that near-future detections will allow us to place powerful constraints, hinting that we may be at the cusp of detecting spin nutations in gravitational-wave data.
Language: English
Subfield: Astronomy and Astrophysics
Field: Physics and Astronomy
Domain: Physical Sciences
Open Access status: green
Awards: G1007684478, G1698145270, WoU-MMA: Gravitational Lensing of Photons and Gravitational Waves in the Era of Multi-Messenger Astrophysics, G1778024638, G3312988307, G368586925, G3753303564, G4096032060, Transnational Access Programme for a Pan-European Network of HPC Research Infrastructures and Laboratories for scientific computing, G4246953992, G4965938462, G5035650712, G5211512078, G6319620625, G8096572912, Black-Hole Spin Precession and its Astrophysical Implications
OpenAlex ID: W4285086741