Residual eccentricity as a systematic uncertainty on the formation channels of binary black holes
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arXiv
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| Autori principali: | , , , , , |
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| Natura: | Preprint |
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2024
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| author | Fumagalli, Giulia Romero-Shaw, Isobel Gerosa, Davide De Renzis, Viola Kritos, Konstantinos Olejak, Aleksandra |
| author_facet | Fumagalli, Giulia Romero-Shaw, Isobel Gerosa, Davide De Renzis, Viola Kritos, Konstantinos Olejak, Aleksandra |
| contents | Resolving the formation channel(s) of merging binary black holes is a key goal in gravitational-wave astronomy. The orbital eccentricity is believed to be a precious tracer of the underlying formation pathway, but is largely dissipated during the usually long inspiral between black hole formation and merger. Most gravitational-wave sources are thus expected to enter the sensitivity windows of current detectors on configurations that are compatible with quasi-circular orbits. In this paper, we investigate the impact of "negligible" residual eccentricity -- lower than currently detectable by LIGO/Virgo -- on our ability to infer the formation history of binary black holes, focusing in particular on their spin orientations. We trace the evolution of both observed and synthetic gravitational-wave events backward in time, while resampling their residual eccentricities to values that are below the detectability threshold. Eccentricities in-band as low as $\sim 10^{-4}$ can lead to significant biases when reconstructing the spin directions, especially in the case of loud, highly precessing systems. Residual eccentricity thus act like a systematic uncertainty for our astrophysical inference. As a mitigation strategy, one can marginalize the posterior distribution over the residual eccentricity using astrophysical predictions. |
| format | Preprint |
| id |
arxiv_https___arxiv_org_abs_2405_14945 |
| institution | arXiv |
| publishDate | 2024 |
| record_format | arxiv |
| spellingShingle | Residual eccentricity as a systematic uncertainty on the formation channels of binary black holes Fumagalli, Giulia Romero-Shaw, Isobel Gerosa, Davide De Renzis, Viola Kritos, Konstantinos Olejak, Aleksandra High Energy Astrophysical Phenomena General Relativity and Quantum Cosmology Resolving the formation channel(s) of merging binary black holes is a key goal in gravitational-wave astronomy. The orbital eccentricity is believed to be a precious tracer of the underlying formation pathway, but is largely dissipated during the usually long inspiral between black hole formation and merger. Most gravitational-wave sources are thus expected to enter the sensitivity windows of current detectors on configurations that are compatible with quasi-circular orbits. In this paper, we investigate the impact of "negligible" residual eccentricity -- lower than currently detectable by LIGO/Virgo -- on our ability to infer the formation history of binary black holes, focusing in particular on their spin orientations. We trace the evolution of both observed and synthetic gravitational-wave events backward in time, while resampling their residual eccentricities to values that are below the detectability threshold. Eccentricities in-band as low as $\sim 10^{-4}$ can lead to significant biases when reconstructing the spin directions, especially in the case of loud, highly precessing systems. Residual eccentricity thus act like a systematic uncertainty for our astrophysical inference. As a mitigation strategy, one can marginalize the posterior distribution over the residual eccentricity using astrophysical predictions. |
| title | Residual eccentricity as a systematic uncertainty on the formation channels of binary black holes |
| topic | High Energy Astrophysical Phenomena General Relativity and Quantum Cosmology |
| url | https://arxiv.org/abs/2405.14945 |