Systematic Bias Due to Nonspinning Template Waveforms in the Gravitational Wave Parameter Estimation for Aligned-Spin Binary Black Holes

Abstract

We study the parameter estimation of gravitational waves for aligned-spin binary black hole (BBH) signals and assess the impact of bias that can be produced by using nonspinning template waveforms. We employ simple methods to calculate the statistical uncertainty from an overlap distribution. For the fiducial waveform model, we use a phenomenological model, which is designed to generate the gravitational waveforms emitted from merging BBH systems. We show that the mass parameters recovered by nonspinning waveform templates can be significantly biased from the true values of aligned-spin signals. By comparing the systematic bias with the statistical uncertainty, we examine the validity of nonspinning templates for the parameter estimation of aligned-spin BBHs.