ESHS/HSS Annual Meeting

Embracing Methodological Pluralism: Waveform Modeling in Pursuit of Gravitational Waves

• In Event: Shifting Perspectives on Histories of Gravity and Mass 2

English Abstract

The first direct detection of gravitational waves in 2015 relied on decades of work to develop waveform models suitable for LIGO’s matched-filtering pipeline. This talk examines how, since the 1990s, gravitational wave researchers gradually embraced methodological pluralism by combining analytical relativity, numerical relativity, and perturbative techniques to construct templates covering the full inspiral–merger–ringdown signal. Analytical methods accurately describe the early inspiral but fail in the strongly nonlinear merger regime, while numerical relativity, following the 2005 breakthrough, provides essential merger waveforms but is too computationally expensive to map the full parameter space.
Rather than choosing a single approach, researchers developed hybrid, phenomenological, and effective-one-body models calibrated on numerical simulations, integrating the strengths of each method. These efforts were shaped by local constraints—research traditions, computational resources, funding politics, and collaborative organization—but together produced the waveform library needed for detection.

Author

• Jean-Philippe Martinez, Max Planck Institute for Gravitational Physics (Albert Einstein Institute)