We show that for detections of gravitational-wave transients, constraints can be given on physical parameters of the source without using any specific astrophysical models. Relying only on fundamental principles of general relativity, we can set upper limits on the size, mass, and distance of the source solely from characteristics of the observed waveform. If the distance of the source is known from independent (e.g. electromagnetic) observations, we can also set lower limits on the mass and size. As a demonstration, we tested these constraints on binary black hole signals observed by the LIGO and Virgo detectors during their first and second observing runs, as well as on simulated binary black hole and core-collapse supernova signals reconstructed from simulated detector data. We have found that our constraints are valid for all analyzed source types, but their efficiency (namely, how far they are from the true parameter values) strongly depends on the source type, ranging from being in the same order of magnitude to a several orders of magnitude difference. In cases when a gravitational-wave signal is reconstructed without waveform templates and no astrophysical model on the source is available, these constraints provide the only quantitative characterization of the source that can guide the astrophysical modeling process.

中文翻译：

---

解释引力波爆发探测：在没有天体物理模型的情况下约束源属性

我们表明，对于引力波瞬变的检测，可以在不使用任何特定天体物理模型的情况下对源的物理参数给出约束。仅依靠广义相对论的基本原理，我们就可以仅根据观察到的波形特征来设置源的大小、质量和距离的上限。如果从独立（例如电磁）观测中知道源的距离，我们还可以设置质量和大小的下限。作为演示，我们测试了 LIGO 和 Virgo 探测器在第一次和第二次观测期间观测到的双黑洞信号的这些约束，以及从模拟探测器数据重建的模拟双黑洞和核心坍缩超新星信号。我们发现我们的约束对所有分析的源类型都有效，但它们的效率（即它们与真实参数值的距离）在很大程度上取决于源类型，范围从相同数量级到几个数量级量级差异。如果在没有波形模板的情况下重建引力波信号并且源上没有可用的天体物理模型，这些约束提供了可以指导天体物理建模过程的源的唯一定量表征。