Thomas Edwards (Stockholm University) will present "Searching for General Binary Inspirals with Gravitational Waves"

Thursday 24 Sept 2020, 13:15 → 14:15 Europe/Stockholm

https://stockholmuniversity.zoom.us/j/67587664617
 

Abstract: To recover binary signals from noisy data, matched-filtering techniques are typically required. This is especially true for low-mass systems, with total mass M<10 solar masses, which can inspiral in the LIGO and Virgo frequency bands for thousands of cycles. In this talk, I will focus on the question of whether the current search pipelines could have missed signals from these binaries. In particular, I will focus on the detectability of binary systems whose individual components can have large spin-induced quadrupole moments and small compactness. The quadrupole contributes to the phase evolution of the waveform whereas the compactness affects the merger frequency of the binary. I’ll show that binary black hole templates (with dimensionless quadrupole κ = 1) cannot be reliably used to search for objects with large quadrupoles (κ 􏰀>20) over a wide range of parameter space. This is especially true if the general object is highly spinning and has a larger mass than its binary companion. Finally, I will discuss the work currently being done to enable searches for these general objects.