Testing the nature of GW200105 by probing the frequency evolution of eccentricity

Abstract

GW200105 is a compact binary coalescence (CBC) event, consisting of a neutron star and a black hole, observed in LIGO-Virgo-KAGRA's (LVK's) third observing run (O3). Recent reanalyses of the event using state-of-the-art waveform models have claimed observation of signatures of an eccentric orbit. It has nevertheless been pointed out in the literature that certain physical or modified gravity effects could mimic eccentricity by producing a spurious non-zero eccentricity value, at a given reference frequency, when recovered with an eccentric waveform model. We recently developed a waveform-model-independent Eccentricity Evolution Consistency Test (EECT, S. A. Bhat et al. 2025) to identify such mimickers, by comparing the measured frequency $\text{evolution}$ of eccentricity, $e(f)$, with that expected from General Relativity (GR). In this $\text{paper}$, we apply EECT to GW200105 and find that it satisfies EECT within 68% confidence. Our analysis therefore lends complementary support in favour of the eccentricity hypothesis, while also providing a novel test of the consistency of $e(f)$ with GR.

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Cited by in corpus (2)

• A comprehensive look into the accuracy of SpEC binary black hole waveforms
• Inferring host environment properties and gravitational-wave decay time from the eccentricity measurement of dynamically captured binaries