On the detectability of post-Newtonian effects in gravitational-wave emission of a coalescing binary

Abstract

The effect of the recently obtained 2nd post-Newtonian corrections on the accuracy of estimation of parameters of the gravitational-wave signal from a coalescing binary is investigated. It is shown that addition of this correction degrades considerably the accuracy of determination of individual masses of the members of the binary. However the chirp mass and the time parameter in the sinal is still determined to a very good accuracy. The performance of the Newtonian filter is investigated and it is compared with performance of post-Newtonian search templates introduced recently. It is shown that both search templates can extract accurately useful information about the binary.