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Signs of eccentricity in two gravitational-wave signals may indicate a sub-population of dynamically assembled binary black holes

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arxiv 2108.01284 v2 pith:JNJ56SOK submitted 2021-08-03 astro-ph.HE

classification astro-ph.HE
keywords eccentricitybinaryblackholeassembledcredibilitydynamicallygravitational-wave
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abstract

The orbital eccentricity of a merging binary black hole leaves an imprint on the associated gravitational-wave signal that can reveal whether the binary formed in isolation or in a dynamical environment, such as the core of a dense star cluster. We present measurements of the eccentricity of 26 binary black hole mergers in the second LIGO--Virgo gravitational-wave transient catalog, updating the total number of binary black holes analysed for orbital eccentricity to 36. Using the \texttt{SEOBNRE} waveform, we find the data for GW190620A is poorly explained by the zero-eccentricity hypothesis (frequentist $p$-value $\lesssim 0.1\%$). Using a log-uniform prior on eccentricity, the eccentricity at $\unit[10]{Hz}$ for GW190620A is constrained to $e_{10}\geq0.05$ ($0.1$) at $74\%$ ($65\%$) credibility. With this log-uniform prior, we obtain a $90\%$ credible lower eccentricity limit of $0.001$, while assuming a uniform prior leads the data to prefer $e_{10} \geq 0.11$ at $90\%$ credibility. This is the second measurement of a binary black hole system with statistical support for non-zero eccentricity; the intermediate-mass black hole merger GW190521 was the first. Interpretation of these two events is currently complicated by waveform systematics; we are unable to simultaneously model the effects of relativistic precession and eccentricity. However, if these two events are, in fact, eccentric mergers, then there are potentially many more dynamically assembled mergers in the LIGO--Virgo catalog without measurable eccentricity; $\gtrsim 27\%$ of the observed LIGO--Virgo binaries may have been assembled dynamically in dense stellar environments ($95\%$ credibility).

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Cited by 6 Pith papers

Reviewed papers in the Pith corpus that reference this work. Sorted by Pith novelty score. Full citation record

  1. Dissecting environmental effects with eccentric gravitational wave sources

    astro-ph.HE 2025-06 conditional novelty 7.0 of 10

    Resonances between oscillating environmental forces and the epicyclic motion of eccentric binaries can dominate gravitational wave dephasing over orbit-averaged drag for eccentricities above about 0.05.

  2. Accurate waveforms for eccentric, aligned-spin binary black holes: The multipolar effective-one-body model SEOBNRv5EHM

    gr-qc 2024-12 conditional novelty 7.0 of 10

    SEOBNRv5EHM, a new effective-one-body waveform model with third-post-Newtonian eccentricity corrections, reaches a median 0.02% mismatch against eccentric numerical-relativity simulations, about an order of magnitude ...

  3. A geometric template bank for the detection of spinning low-mass compact binaries with moderate orbital eccentricity

    gr-qc 2024-12 conditional novelty 7.0 of 10

    A geometric template bank including eccentricity recovers moderately eccentric BNS/NSBH signals with less than 6% loss, while quasi-circular banks miss up to 40%.

  4. A parametrized test of general relativity for inspiralling eccentric binaries in LISA

    gr-qc 2026-08 conditional novelty 6.0 of 10

    For eccentric black-hole binaries observed by LISA, a parametrized deformation of the periastron-precession rate could be constrained to |δα|≲10^-4 at 90% credibility with the full-model template.

  5. Chase Orbits, not Time: A Scalable Paradigm for Long-Duration Eccentric Gravitational-Wave Surrogates

    gr-qc 2025-09 conditional novelty 6.0 of 10

    Eccentric inspiral waveforms are modeled against mean anomaly rather than time, yielding an order-of-magnitude compression and a 2.77e6 M surrogate that is ~20x faster to evaluate.

  6. Inferring additional physics through unmodelled signal reconstructions

    gr-qc 2024-12 conditional novelty 5.0 of 10

    A cWB overlap mismatch metric, Δmedian, separates simulated 40 solar mass black hole mergers with e20 ≳ 0.17 from circular ones even when parameter estimation uses only quasicircular waveforms.

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