Searching for Eccentricity: Signatures of Dynamical Formation in the First Gravitational-Wave Transient Catalogue of LIGO and Virgo

Abstract

Binary black holes are thought to form primarily via two channels: isolated evolution and dynamical formation. The component masses, spins, and eccentricity of a binary black hole system provide clues to its formation history. We focus on eccentricity, which can be a signature of dynamical formation. Employing the spin-aligned eccentric waveform model SEOBNRE, we perform Bayesian inference to measure the eccentricity of binary black hole merger events in the first Gravitational-Wave Transient Catalogue of LIGO and Virgo. We find that all of these events are consistent with zero eccentricity. We set upper limits on eccentricity ranging from 0.02 to 0.05 with 90% confidence at a reference frequency of 10 Hz. These upper limits do not significantly constrain the fraction of LIGO-Virgo events formed dynamically in globular clusters, because only ~ 5% are expected to merge with measurable eccentricity. However, with the Gravitational-Wave Transient Catalogue set to expand dramatically over the coming months, it may soon be possible to significantly constrain the fraction of mergers taking place in globular clusters using eccentricity measurements.

7 pages, 6 figures

References in corpus (18)

• GW170817: Observation of Gravitational Waves from a Binary Neutron Star Inspiral
• Advanced Virgo: a 2nd generation interferometric gravitational wave detector
• Robust parameter estimation for compact binaries with ground-based gravitational-wave observations using the LALInference software library
• Illuminating Black Hole Binary Formation Channels with Spins in Advanced LIGO
• Lidov-Kozai Cycles with Gravitational Radiation: Merging Black Holes in Isolated Triple Systems
• Distinguishing Spin-Aligned and Isotropic Black Hole Populations With Gravitational Waves
• The Dynamical Evolution of Stellar Black Holes in Globular Clusters
• Where are LIGO's Big Black Holes?
• A waveform model for eccentric binary black hole based on effective-one-body-numerical-relativity (EOBNR) formalism
• Accurate and efficient waveforms for compact binaries on eccentric orbits
• Black hole mergers from quadruples
• Common envelope ejection in massive binary stars - Implications for the progenitors of GW150914 and GW151226
• Circularization and Final Spin in Eccentric Binary Black Hole Inspirals
• Spin-orbit interactions in black-hole binaries
• Evidence for Dynamically Driven Formation of the GW170817 Neutron Star Binary in NGC 4993
• Induced Ellipticity for Inspiraling Binary Systems
• Ready-to-use Fourier domain templates for compact binaries inspiraling along moderately eccentric orbits
• Effective spin distribution of black hole mergers in triples

Cited by in corpus (12)

• Properties and astrophysical implications of the 150 Msun binary black hole merger GW190521
• Eccentric binary black hole surrogate models for the gravitational waveform and remnant properties: comparable mass, nonspinning case
• Validating the Effective-One-Body Numerical-Relativity Waveform Models for Spin-aligned Binary Black Holes along Eccentric Orbits
• Measuring the eccentricity of GW170817 and GW190425
• Impact of eccentricity on the gravitational wave searches for binary black holes: High mass case
• Do unequal-mass binary black hole systems have larger ${\chi }_{\text{eff}}$? Probing correlations with copulas in gravitational-wave astronomy
• Quiescent and active galactic nuclei as factories of merging compact objects in the era of gravitational-wave astronomy
• A Rosetta Stone for eccentric gravitational waveform models
• Integrability of eccentric, spinning black hole binaries up to second post-Newtonian order
• Search for Black Hole Merger Families
• Nonlinear noise regression in gravitational-wave detectors with convolutional neural networks
• An eccentric binary blackhole in post-Newtonian theory