Bayesian analysis of late-time tails in spin-aligned eccentric binary black hole mergers

Fuente: arXiv
Saved in:
Bibliographic Details
Main Authors: Islam, Tousif, Faggioli, Guglielmo, Khanna, Gaurav
Format: Preprint
Published: 2025
Subjects:
Online Access:
Tags: Add Tag
No Tags, Be the first to tag this record!
_version_ 1866914172389818368
author Islam, Tousif
Faggioli, Guglielmo
Khanna, Gaurav
author_facet Islam, Tousif
Faggioli, Guglielmo
Khanna, Gaurav
contents We present a comprehensive analysis of late-time tails in gravitational radiation from merging spin-aligned eccentric binary black holes, using high-accuracy point-particle black hole perturbation theory simulations. We simulate the late-time evolution of 15 binary black hole mergers with mass ratio $q = 1000$, dimensionless spins $χ= [-0.9, -0.6, 0.0, 0.6, 0.9]$ and eccentricity at the last stable orbit $e_{\rm LSO} = [0.8, 0.9, 0.95]$. We track the tail amplitudes and exponents up to a retarded time coordinate $t = 9000M$ after merger for the six spin-weighted spherical harmonic modes $(2,1)$, $(2,2)$, $(3,2)$, $(3,3)$, $(4,3)$, and $(4,4)$ employing both frequentist and Bayesian approaches. We note that the tails are increasingly pronounced for binaries with high eccentricity $e_{\rm LSO}$ and large negative spin $χ$. We find that the overall late-time exponents closely approach their predicted asymptotic values ($p=-\ell-4$ for Weyl curvature scalar $ψ_{4,\ell m}$ where $\ell$ is the spin-weighted spherical harmonic index), while estimates restricted to the latest portion of the data exactly recover them. We further verify numerically that modes with the same spherical index $\ell$ share identical tail exponents, while variations in $m$ do not affect the tail behavior. Our analysis framework is publicly available through the gwtails Python package.
format Preprint
id arxiv_https___arxiv_org_abs_2511_21898
institution arXiv
publishDate 2025
record_format arxiv
spellingShingle Bayesian analysis of late-time tails in spin-aligned eccentric binary black hole mergers
Islam, Tousif
Faggioli, Guglielmo
Khanna, Gaurav
General Relativity and Quantum Cosmology
We present a comprehensive analysis of late-time tails in gravitational radiation from merging spin-aligned eccentric binary black holes, using high-accuracy point-particle black hole perturbation theory simulations. We simulate the late-time evolution of 15 binary black hole mergers with mass ratio $q = 1000$, dimensionless spins $χ= [-0.9, -0.6, 0.0, 0.6, 0.9]$ and eccentricity at the last stable orbit $e_{\rm LSO} = [0.8, 0.9, 0.95]$. We track the tail amplitudes and exponents up to a retarded time coordinate $t = 9000M$ after merger for the six spin-weighted spherical harmonic modes $(2,1)$, $(2,2)$, $(3,2)$, $(3,3)$, $(4,3)$, and $(4,4)$ employing both frequentist and Bayesian approaches. We note that the tails are increasingly pronounced for binaries with high eccentricity $e_{\rm LSO}$ and large negative spin $χ$. We find that the overall late-time exponents closely approach their predicted asymptotic values ($p=-\ell-4$ for Weyl curvature scalar $ψ_{4,\ell m}$ where $\ell$ is the spin-weighted spherical harmonic index), while estimates restricted to the latest portion of the data exactly recover them. We further verify numerically that modes with the same spherical index $\ell$ share identical tail exponents, while variations in $m$ do not affect the tail behavior. Our analysis framework is publicly available through the gwtails Python package.
title Bayesian analysis of late-time tails in spin-aligned eccentric binary black hole mergers
topic General Relativity and Quantum Cosmology
url https://arxiv.org/abs/2511.21898