Surrogate model for gravitational wave signals from nonspinning, comparable-to large-mass-ratio black hole binaries built on black hole perturbation theory waveforms calibrated to numerical relativity

Gravitational waveforms obtained using numerical relativity (NR) are computationally expensive and slow. Surrogate models provide an alternative to full NR by extrapolating from the point-particle regime of high-mass ratio binary waveforms calibrated to NR to much smaller mass ratios. The authors show that their methods work over a remarkable range of mass ratios of 2.5 to 10000 showing good agreement with NR simulations.