Parameter estimation with the current generation of phenomenological waveform models applied to the black hole mergers of GWTC-1

Abstract

ABSTRACT We consider the 10 confidently detected gravitational-wave signals in the GWTC-1 catalog, which are consistent with mergers of binary black hole systems, and perform a thorough parameter estimation re-analysis. This is made possible by using computationally efficient waveform models of the current (fourth) generation of the IMRPhenom family of phenomenological waveform models, which consists of the IMRPhenomX frequency-domain models and the IMRPhenomT time-domain models.The analysis is performed with both precessing and non-precessing waveform models with and without subdominant spherical harmonic modes. Results for all events are validated with convergence tests, discussing in particular the events GW170729 and GW151226. For the latter and the other two lowest-mass events, we also compare results between two independent sampling codes, bilbyand lalinference. We find overall consistent results with the original GWTC-1 results, with all Jensen–Shannon divergences between the previous results using IMRPhenomPv2 and our default IMRPhenomXPHM posteriors below 0.045 bits. However, we also discuss cases where subdominant harmonics and/or precession influence the posteriors.