Impact of eccentricity and mean anomaly in numerical relativity mergers

Abstract

Accurate modelling of black hole binaries is critical to achieve the science goals of gravitational-wave detectors. Modelling such configurations relies strongly on calibration to numerical-relativity (NR) simulations. Binaries on quasi-circular orbits have been widely explored in NR, however, coverage of the broader 9-dimensional parameter space, including orbital eccentricity, remains sparse. This article develops a new procedure to control orbital eccentricity of binary black hole simulations that enables choosing initial data parameters with precise control over eccentricity and mean anomaly of the subsequent evolution, as well as the coalescence time. We then calculate several sequences of NR simulations that nearly uniformly cover the 2-dimensional eccentricity--mean anomaly space for equal mass, non-spinning binary black holes. We demonstrate that, for fixed eccentricity, many quantities related to the merger dynamics of binary black holes show an oscillatory dependence on mean anomaly. The amplitude of these oscillations scales nearly linearly with the eccentricity of the system. We find that for the eccentricities explored in this work, the magnitude of deviations in various quantities such as the merger amplitude and peak luminosity can approach $\sim 5\%$ of their quasi-circular value. We use our findings to explain eccentric phenomena reported in other studies. We also show that methods for estimating the remnant mass employed in the effective-one-body approach exhibit similar deviations, roughly matching the amplitude of the oscillations we find in NR simulations. This work is an important step towards a complete description of eccentric binary black hole mergers, and demonstrates the importance of considering the entire 2-dimensional parameter subspace related to eccentricity.

arXiv comment31 pages, 12 figures. Updated to match version published in CQG

References in corpus (67)

• GWTC-1: A Gravitational-Wave Transient Catalog of Compact Binary Mergers Observed by LIGO and Virgo during the First and Second Observing Runs
• GWTC-2: Compact Binary Coalescences Observed by LIGO and Virgo During the First Half of the Third Observing Run
• Evolution of Binary Black Hole Spacetimes
• Accurate Evolutions of Orbiting Black-Hole Binaries Without Excision
• Gravitational wave extraction from an inspiraling configuration of merging black holes
• Binary Black Hole Population Properties Inferred from the First and Second Observing Runs of Advanced LIGO and Advanced Virgo
• Transition from inspiral to plunge in binary black hole coalescences
• Black hole mergers in the universe
• Open data from the first and second observing runs of Advanced LIGO and Advanced Virgo
• Inspiral, merger and ring-down of equal-mass black-hole binaries
• The SXS Collaboration catalog of binary black hole simulations
• Surrogate models for precessing binary black hole simulations with unequal masses
• High-accuracy comparison of numerical relativity simulations with post-Newtonian expansions
• New binary black hole mergers in the second observing run of Advanced LIGO and Advanced Virgo
• A New Generalized Harmonic Evolution System
• The Formation of Eccentric Compact Binary Inspirals and the Role of Gravitational Wave Emission in Binary-Single Stellar Encounters
• Conformal ``thin sandwich'' data for the initial-value problem of general relativity
• Binary black hole mergers from field triples: properties, rates and the impact of stellar evolution
• Time-domain effective-one-body gravitational waveforms for coalescing compact binaries with nonprecessing spins, tides and self-spin effects
• High-accuracy waveforms for binary black hole inspiral, merger, and ringdown
• Transition from inspiral to plunge in precessing binaries of spinning black holes
• Eccentric Black Hole Mergers in Dense Star Clusters: The Role of Binary-Binary Encounters
• A multidomain spectral method for solving elliptic equations
• Extrinsic Curvature and the Einstein Constraints
• The final spin from binary black holes in quasi-circular orbits
• Reducing orbital eccentricity in binary black hole simulations
• Compact Binary Coalescences in the Band of Ground-based Gravitational-Wave Detectors
• Hierarchical data-driven approach to fitting numerical relativity data for nonprecessing binary black holes with an application to final spin and radiated energy
• Excision boundary conditions for black hole initial data
• Simulations of Binary Black Hole Mergers Using Spectral Methods
• Black hole mergers from an evolving population of globular clusters
• Laying the foundation of the effective-one-body waveform models SEOBNRv5: improved accuracy and efficiency for spinning non-precessing binary black holes
• Effective-one-body multipolar waveforms for eccentric binary black holes with non-precessing spins
• An eccentric binary black hole inspiral-merger-ringdown gravitational waveform model from numerical relativity and post-Newtonian theory
• Redshift Evolution of the Black Hole Merger Rate from Globular Clusters
• Binary black hole merger in the extreme mass ratio limit
• Eccentric binary black hole surrogate models for the gravitational waveform and remnant properties: comparable mass, nonspinning case
• Comparisons of eccentric binary black hole simulations with post-Newtonian models
• Simulations of non-equal mass black hole binaries with spectral methods
• Reducing orbital eccentricity of precessing black-hole binaries
• Stable radiation-controlling boundary conditions for the generalized harmonic Einstein equations
• Testing outer boundary treatments for the Einstein equations
• Dynamical Excision Boundaries in Spectral Evolutions of Binary Black Hole Spacetimes
• PhenomXO4a: a phenomenological gravitational-wave model for precessing black-hole binaries with higher multipoles and asymmetries
• Measuring orbital eccentricity and periastron advance in quasi-circular black hole simulations
• Final spin of a coalescing black-hole binary: an Effective-One-Body approach
• A first survey of spinning eccentric black hole mergers: Numerical relativity simulations, hybrid waveforms, and parameter estimation
• Defining eccentricity for gravitational wave astronomy
• Systematic bias on parameterized tests of general relativity due to neglect of orbital eccentricity
• Reducing spurious gravitational radiation in binary-black-hole simulations by using conformally curved initial data
• Eccentric binary black holes: Comparing numerical relativity and small mass-ratio perturbation theory
• Improvements to the construction of binary black hole initial data
• Physics of eccentric binary black hole mergers: A numerical relativity perspective
• A Rosetta Stone for eccentric gravitational waveform models
• An efficient iterative method to reduce eccentricity in numerical-relativity simulations of compact binary inspiral
• Precession-tracking coordinates for simulations of compact-object-binaries
• Unveiling the merger structure of black hole binaries in generic planar orbits
• Simple procedures to reduce eccentricity of binary black hole simulations
• Spectral Methods for Numerical Relativity. The Initial Data Problem
• Fundamental frequencies and resonances from eccentric and precessing binary black hole inspirals
• A study of the Inspiral-Merger-Ringdown Consistency Test with gravitational-wave signals from compact binaries in eccentric orbits
• Gravitational-wave inference for eccentric binaries: the argument of periapsis
• Characterization of numerical relativity waveforms of eccentric binary black hole mergers
• Anomalies in the gravitational recoil of eccentric black-hole mergers with unequal mass ratios
• Merger states and final states of black hole coalescences: a numerical-relativity-assisted effective-one-body approach
• Initial Data and Eccentricity Reduction Toolkit for Binary Black Hole Numerical Relativity Waveforms
• Characterizing the effect of eccentricity on the dynamics of binary black hole mergers in numerical relativity

Cited by in corpus (9)

• GW231123: a Binary Black Hole Merger with Total Mass 190-265 $M_{\odot }$
• Accurate waveforms for eccentric, aligned-spin binary black holes: The multipolar effective-one-body model SEOBNRv5EHM
• The SXS Collaboration's third catalog of binary black hole simulations
• Third post-Newtonian dynamics for eccentric orbits and aligned spins in the effective-one-body waveform model SEOBNRv5EHM
• Peaking into the abyss: Characterizing the merger of equatorial-eccentric-geodesic plunges in rotating black holes
• Data-driven extraction, phenomenology and modeling of eccentric harmonics in binary black hole merger waveforms
• Spin-up and mass-gain in hyperbolic encounters of spinning black holes
• Parameter control for binary black hole initial data
• The influence of the mean anomaly on the dynamical quantities of binary black hole mergers in eccentric orbits