LIGO Document T1600168-v6

Determining the final spin of a binary black hole system including in-plane spins: Method and checks of accuracy

Document #:
LIGO-T1600168-v6
Document type:
T - Technical notes
Other Versions:
LIGO-T1600168-v5
08 Jun 2016, 22:09
Abstract:
We describe a simple extension to aligned-spin fits for the final spin of a binary black hole system that includes the contribution from the in-plane spins. We show that this addition gives good agreement with the final spin from a suite of 752 numerical relativity simulations when applied to the aligned-spin fit from Healy, Lousto, and Zlochower (HLZ). This agreement is increased if one evolves the spins using post-Newtonian expressions. We also show that the unmodified HLZ final mass fit gives good agreement with the numerical relativity data.
Files in Document:
Notes and Changes:
Public version of LIGO-T1600162
v2: Incorporates reviewer comments
v3: Add a reference, include reviewers as authors, and include DOI links in the bibliography
v4: Add acknowledgments for NR waveforms
v5: Add remaining NR people to acknowledgments
v6: Incorporate small corrections to NR data, add references to the NR-PE paper and to a recent fit, and compare with the errors when one does not include the in-plane spins.
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