Comparing gravitational waveform models for binary black hole mergers through a hypermodels approach

Understand

The inference of source parameters from gravitational-wave signals relies on theoretical models that describe the emitted waveform.

• Different model assumptions on which the computation of these models is based could lead to biases in the analysis of gravitational-wave data.
• In this work, we sample directly on four state-of-the-art binary black hole waveform models from different families, in order to investigate these systematic biases from the 13 heaviest gravitational-wave sources with moderate to high signal-to-noise ratios in the third Gravitational-Wave Transient Catalog (GWTC- 3).
• All models include spin-precession as well as higher-order modes.