Papers › Evidence for eccentricity in the population of binary black holes observed by LIGO-Virgo-KAGRA
Evidence for eccentricity in the population of binary black holes observed by LIGO-Virgo-KAGRA
Nihar Gupte, Antoni Ramos-Buades, Alessandra Buonanno, Jonathan Gair, M. Coleman Miller, Maximilian Dax, Stephen R. Green, Michael Pürrer, Jonas Wildberger, Jakob Macke, Isobel M. Romero-Shaw, Bernhard Schölkopf
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Binary black holes (BBHs) in eccentric orbits produce distinct modulations in gravitational waves (GWs); measuring orbital eccentricity provides evidence for dynamical binary formation channels. We analyze 57 GW events from the LIGO-Virgo-KAGRA (LVK) O1-O3 observing runs using a multipolar aligned-spin inspiral-merger-ringdown waveform with two eccentric parameters: eccentricity and relativistic anomaly (assuming a quasi-circular merger-ringdown), made computationally feasible by the machine-learning code \texttt{DINGO}, which accelerates inference by 2-3 orders of magnitude. First, with a uniform eccentricity prior, eccentric vs. quasi-circular aligned-spin log₁₀ Bayes factors are 1.84-4.75 (depending on glitch mitigation) for GW200129, 3.0 for GW190701 and 1.77 for GW200208_22. We infer e_(gw, 10Hz) (e_(gw, 20Hz)) to be 0.27_(-0.12)^(+0.10) (0.16_(-0.05)^(+0.04)) to 0.17_(-0.13)^(+0.14) (0.1_(-0.04)^(+0.05)) for GW200129, 0.54_(-0.30)^(+0.12) (0.31_(-0.13)^(+0.12)) for GW190701 and 0.39_(-0.23)^(+0.23) (0.21_(-0.08)^(+0.08)) for GW200208_22. Second, eccentric aligned-spin vs. quasi-circular precessing-spin log₁₀ Bayes factors are 1.43-4.92 for GW200129, 2.61 for GW190701 and 1.23 for GW200208_22. Third, GW190521 shows no evidence for eccentricity (log₁₀ Bayes factor 0.04). Fourth, neglecting spin-precession with an astrophysically-motivated prior on the eccentric BBH rate, the probability of one of the 57 events being eccentric exceeds 99.5\% or (100-8.4×10⁻⁴)\% (depending on glitch mitigation). Fifth, we study parameter estimation impacts of neglecting eccentricity in quasi-circular models or higher modes in eccentric models. These results underscore the inclusion of eccentric parameters in BBH characterization for upcoming LVK runs and future ground- and space-based detectors probing more diverse BBH populations.
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