Parameter Estimation of Ringdown Quasinormal Modes with Autoencoder
gr-qc, astro-ph.HE, astro-ph.IM, cs.LG, hep-th
Submitted: 2026-09-13
Updated: 2026-09-13
Comments: 26 pages, 18 figures, 3 tables
License: http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/
The gist: Ringdown gravitational waves from binary black hole mergers can be modeled as superpositions of quasinormal modes (QNMs), whose frequencies and excitation factors encode properties of the remnant
Terminology
Abstract
Ringdown gravitational waves from binary black hole mergers can be modeled as superpositions of quasinormal modes (QNMs), whose frequencies and excitation factors encode properties of the remnant Kerr black hole. Reliable extraction of multiple QNM components is challenging because of mode overlap and noise. We develop an autoencoder-based framework for multi-component QNM analysis, in which the latent space is trained to represent the physical parameters of individual modes, enabling waveform denoising and parameter estimation within a common framework. Using controlled model waveforms constructed as finite sums of Kerr QNMs with recently established high-precision frequencies and excitation factors, including their nontrivial spin dependence near resonant excitation, we assess the method across partitioned spin intervals. The model achieves good in-domain waveform reconstruction and parameter recovery for the two longest-lived components of eight-component input waveforms, while its performance degrades when the validation spins lie far outside the training range. In a selected spin interval, the framework also recovers the 32 parameters of an eight-component waveform with good overall agreement. These results demonstrate the feasibility of physics-informed autoencoder-based inference for a prescribed multi-component ringdown waveform family and motivate further tests with progressively more realistic signals.
Sources
- GW250114: testing Hawking's area law and the Kerr nature of black holes
- Black hole spectroscopy: from theory to experiment
- Quasi-Normal Modes of Stars and Black Holes
- Quasinormal modes of black holes and black branes
- Quasinormal modes of black holes: from astrophysics to string theory
- Resonant Excitation of Quasinormal Modes of Black Holes
- Quasinormal modes and excitation factors of Kerr black holes
- GWTC-5.0: Observations from the Second Part of the Fourth LIGO-Virgo-KAGRA Observing Run and Updates to the Gravitational-Wave Transient Catalog
- Resonance in black hole ringdown: Benchmarking quasinormal mode excitation and extraction
- Black hole ringdown: the importance of overtones
- Agnostic black hole spectroscopy: Quasinormal mode content of numerical relativity waveforms and limits of validity of linear perturbation theory
- Role of black hole quasinormal mode overtones for ringdown analysis
- Extracting linear and nonlinear quasinormal modes from black hole merger simulations
- Iterative extraction of overtones from black hole ringdown
- Quasinormal-mode filters: a new approach to analyze the gravitational-wave ringdown of binary black-hole mergers
- How much of the black hole ringdown is sourced within the light ring?
- Overtones and Nonlinearities in Binary Black Hole Ringdowns
- An Introduction to Autoencoders
- An autoencoder neural network integrated into gravitational-wave burst searches to improve the rejection of noise transients
- Source-Agnostic Gravitational-Wave Detection with Recurrent Autoencoders
Related papers
- Listening to the Horizon: Probing Near-Horizon Reflectivity with GW250114
- A Pairwise Surrogate for Gravitational-Wave Spectra from Highly Relativistic Vacuum Bubble Collisions
- Tests of General Relativity with Einstein Telescope
- A weakly modelled view of the joint compact-binary mass plane: population structure and spectral-siren cosmology
- Unitary quantum matter-bounce in a universe with a positive cosmological constant
- Nonreciprocal black holes with primary hair in beyond Horndeski gravity: Exact solutions and stability