Searching for general binary inspirals with gravitational waves

Abstract

We study whether binary black hole template banks can be used to search for\nthe gravitational waves emitted by general binary coalescences. To recover\nbinary signals from noisy data, matched-filtering techniques are typically\nrequired. This is especially true for low-mass systems, with total mass $M\n\\lesssim 10 \\, M_\\odot$, which can inspiral in the LIGO and Virgo frequency\nbands for thousands of cycles. In this paper, we focus on the detectability of\nlow-mass binary systems whose individual components can have large spin-induced\nquadrupole moments and small compactness. The quadrupole contributes to the\nphase evolution of the waveform whereas the compactness affects the merger\nfrequency of the binary. We find that binary black hole templates (with\ndimensionless quadrupole $\\kappa=1$) cannot be reliably used to search for\nobjects with large quadrupoles ($\\kappa\\gtrsim 20$) over a wide range of\nparameter space. This is especially true if the general object is highly\nspinning and has a larger mass than its binary companion. A binary that\nconsists of objects with small compactness could merge in the LIGO and Virgo\nfrequency bands, thereby reducing its accumulated signal-to-noise ratio during\nthe inspiraling regime. Template banks which include these more general\nwaveforms must therefore be constructed. These extended banks would allow us to\nrealistically search for the existence of new astrophysical and beyond the\nStandard Model compact objects.\n