Gravitational wave signals from coalescing binary black hole and neutron star sytems

Abstract

[eng] The aim of this project is to present the current state of Neutron Star-Black Hole system detections and give a sense of how they can be studied and what can be learned from them. For that, it walks the reader through the basics of General Relativity and Gravitational Waves theory, with an overview of linearized theory, the wave solutions of the Einstein Equations and the quadrupole approximation. Then, the physics of the formation and composition of the sources that radiate gravitational waves are explained in order to show how they a ect the emitted ra- diation. Namely, these sources are black holes, neutron stars and white dwarfs in binary systems, and detecting and understanding their e ects on the gravitational wave radiation would help to better comprehend them and allow the inference of their equation of state. In addition, it describes the process of detection and sub- sequent data analysis and reviews the models utilized to characterize gravitational waveforms using analytical and numerical solutions. This leads to the discussion of the gravitational-wave signals detected so far, speci cally the only two Neutron Star-Black Hole detections to date. Finally, a comparison of the agreement between di erent waveform models is used to better understand their reliability and the sig- ni cance of possible systematic errors in terms of the current and future sensitivity of gravitational wave detectors.