Gravitational-Wave Astronomy with Inspiral Signals of Spinning Compact-Object Binaries

Understand

Inspiral signals from binary compact objects (black holes and neutron stars) are primary targets of the ongoing searches by ground-based gravitational-wave interferometers (LIGO, Virgo, GEO-600 and TAMA-300).

• We present parameter-estimation simulations for inspirals of black-hole--neutron-star binaries using Markov-chain Monte-Carlo methods.
• For the first time, we have both estimated the parameters of a binary inspiral source with a spinning component and determined the accuracy of the parameter estimation, for simulated observations with ground-based gravitational-wave detectors.
• We demonstrate that we can obtain the distance, sky position, and binary orientation at a higher accuracy than previously suggested in the literature.