Paper detail

Parameter estimation of neutron star-black hole binaries using an advanced gravitational-wave detector network: Effects of the full post-Newtonian waveform

We investigate the effects of using the {\it full} waveform (FWF) over the conventional {\it restricted} waveform (RWF) of the inspiral signal from a coalescing compact binary (CCB) system in extracting the parameters of the source, using a global network of second generation interferometric detectors. We study a hypothetical population of (1.4-10)$M_\odot$ NS-BH binaries (uniformly distributed and oriented in the sky) by employing the full post-Newtonian waveforms, which not only include contributions from various harmonics other than the dominant one (quadrupolar mode) but also the post-Newtonian amplitude corrections associated with each harmonic, of the inspiral signal expected from this system. It is expected that the GW detector network consisting of the two LIGO detectors and a Virgo detector will be joined by KAGRA and by proposed LIGO-India. We study the problem of parameter estimation with all 16 possible detector configurations. Comparing medians of error distributions obtained using FWFs with those obtained using RWFs (which only include contributions from the dominant harmonic with Newtonian amplitude) we find that the measurement accuracies for luminosity distance and the cosine of the inclination angle improve almost by a factor of 1.5-2 depending upon the network under consideration. Although the use of FWF does not improve the source localization accuracy much, the global network consisting of five detectors will improve the source localization accuracy by a factor of 4 as compared to the estimates using a 3 detector LIGO-Virgo network for the same waveform model.