Quantifying the effect of power spectral density uncertainty on gravitational-wave parameter estimation for compact binary sources

Abstract

In order to perform Bayesian parameter estimation to infer the source properties of gravitational waves from compact binary coalescences (CBCs), the noise characteristics of the detector must be understood. It is typically assumed that the detector noise is stationary and Gaussian, characterized by a power spectral density (PSD) that is measured with infinite precision. We present a new method to incorporate the uncertainty in the power spectral density estimation into the Bayesian inference of the binary source parameters and apply it to the first 11 CBC detections reported by the LIGO-Virgo Collaboration. We find that incorporating the PSD uncertainty only leads to variations in the positions and widths of the binary parameter posteriors on the order of a few percent.