A detailed analysis of GW190521 with phenomenological waveform models

Understand

In this paper we present an extensive analysis of the GW190521 gravitational wave event with the current (fourth) generation of phenomenological waveform models for binary black hole coalescences.

• GW190521 stands out from other events since only a few wave cycles are observable.
• This leads to a number of challenges, one being that such short signals are prone to not resolve approximate waveform degeneracies, which may result in multi-modal posterior distributions.
• The family of waveform models we use includes a new fast time-domain model IMRPhenomTPHM, which allows us extensive tests of different priors and robustness with respect to variations in the waveform model, including the content of spherical harmonic modes.