Fast and Accurate Prediction of Numerical Relativity Waveforms from Binary Black Hole Coalescences Using Surrogate Models

Abstract

Simulating a binary black hole coalescence by solving Einstein's equations is computationally expensive, requiring days to months of supercomputing time. Using reduced order modeling techniques, we construct an accurate surrogate model, which is evaluated in a millisecond to a second, for numerical relativity (NR) waveforms from nonspinning binary black hole coalescences with mass ratios in [1, 10] and durations corresponding to about 15 orbits before merger. We assess the model's uncertainty and show that our modeling strategy predicts NR waveforms not used for the surrogate's training with errors nearly as small as the numerical error of the NR code. Our model includes all spherical-harmonic _(-2)Y_(ℓm) waveform modes resolved by the NR code up to ℓ=8. We compare our surrogate model to effective one body waveforms from 50M⊙ to 300M⊙ for advanced LIGO detectors and find that the surrogate is always more faithful (by at least an order of magnitude in most cases).

Additional Information

© 2015 American Physical Society. Received 2 March 2015; revised manuscript received 5 August 2015; published 18 September 2015. We thank Mike Boyle, Alessandra Buonanno, Collin Capano, Jan Hesthaven, Jason Kaye, Geoffrey Lovelace, Lee Lindblom, Tom Loredo, Christian Ott, Yi Pan, Harald Pfeiffer, Rory Smith, and Nicholas Taylor for many useful discussions throughout this project. This work was supported in part by NSF Grants No. CAREER PHY-0956189, No. PHY-1068881, No. PHY-1005655, No. PHY-1440083, No. PHY-1404569, and No. AST-1333520 to Caltech, NSF Grants No. PHY-1306125 and No. AST-1333129 to Cornell University, NSF Grant No. PHY-1500818 to the University of California at San Diego, NSF Grants No. PHY-1208861 and No. PHY-1316424 to the University of Maryland (UMD), NSERC of Canada, and the Sherman Fairchild Foundation. Computations were performed on the Zwicky cluster at Caltech, which is supported by the Sherman Fairchild Foundation and by NSF Grant No. PHY-0960291. Portions of this research were carried out at the Center for Scientific Computation and Mathematical Modeling cluster at UMD.

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Submitted - 1502.07758v2.pdf

Published - PhysRevLett.115.121102.pdf

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