Intermediate-mass-ratio inspirals in the Einstein Telescope. I. Signal-to-noise ratio calculations

Journal Article · Tue Feb 15 00:00:00 EST 2011 · Physical Review. D, Particles Fields

DOI:https://doi.org/10.1103/PHYSREVD.83.044020· OSTI ID:21513098

Huerta, E A; Gair, Jonathan R ^[1]

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1. Institute of Astronomy, Madingley Road, CB3 0HA Cambridge (United Kingdom)

The Einstein Telescope (ET) is a proposed third-generation ground-based interferometric gravitational wave detector, for which the target is a sensitivity that is a factor of 10 better than Advanced LIGO and a frequency range that extends down to {approx}1 Hz. Such a third-generation interferometer will provide opportunities to test Einstein's theory of relativity in the strong field and will realize precision gravitational wave astronomy with a thousandfold increase in the expected number of events over the advanced ground-based detectors. A design study for ET is currently underway, so it is timely to assess the science that could be done with such an instrument. This paper is the first in a series that will carry out a detailed study of intermediate-mass-ratio inspirals (IMRIs) for ET. In the context of ET, an IMRI is the inspiral of a neutron star or stellar-mass black hole into an intermediate mass black hole (IMBH). In this paper we focus on the development of IMRI waveform models for circular and equatorial inspirals. We consider two approximations for the waveforms, which both incorporate the inspiral, merger, and ringdown phases in a consistent way. One approximation, valid for IMBHs of arbitrary spin, uses the transition model of Ori and Thorne [A. Ori and K. S. Thorne, Phys. Rev. D 62, 124022 (2000).] to describe the merger, and this is then matched smoothly onto a ringdown waveform. The second approximation uses the effective one body approach to model the merger phase of the waveform and is valid for nonspinning IMBHs. In this paper, we use both waveform models to compute signal-to-noise ratios for IMRI sources detectable by ET. At a redshift of z=1, we find typical signal-to-noise ratios for IMRI systems with masses 1.4M{sub {center_dot}}+100M{sub {center_dot}}, 10M{sub {center_dot}}+100M{sub {center_dot}}, 1.4M{sub {center_dot}}+500M{sub {center_dot}} and 10M{sub {center_dot}}+500M{sub {center_dot}} of {approx}10-25, {approx}40-80, {approx}3-15, and {approx}10-60, respectively. We also find that the two models make predictions for nonspinning inspirals that are consistent to about 10%.

• OSTI ID: 21513098
• Journal Information: Physical Review. D, Particles Fields, Vol. 83, Issue 4; Other Information: DOI: 10.1103/PhysRevD.83.044020; (c) 2011 American Institute of Physics; ISSN 0556-2821
• Country of Publication: United States
• Language: English

Related Subjects

79 ASTROPHYSICS
COSMOLOGY AND ASTRONOMY
ACCURACY
APPROXIMATIONS
BLACK HOLES
FORECASTING
FREQUENCY RANGE
GRAVITATIONAL WAVE DETECTORS
GRAVITATIONAL WAVES
INTERFEROMETERS
MASS
NEUTRON STARS
RED SHIFT
SENSITIVITY
SIGNAL-TO-NOISE RATIO
SPIN
TELESCOPES
WAVE FORMS
ANGULAR MOMENTUM
CALCULATION METHODS
DIMENSIONLESS NUMBERS
MEASURING INSTRUMENTS
PARTICLE PROPERTIES
RADIATION DETECTORS
STARS