Accurate waveforms for eccentric, aligned-spin binary black holes: The multipolar effective-one-body model SEOBNRv5EHM
Creators
-
1.
Max Planck Institute for Gravitational Physics
-
2.
University of Maryland, College Park
-
3.
Perimeter Institute
-
4.
National Institute for Subatomic Physics
-
5.
Cornell University
-
6.
University of Lisbon
-
7.
California Institute of Technology
Abstract
The measurement of orbital eccentricity in gravitational-wave (GW) signals will provide unique insights into the astrophysical origin of binary systems, while ignoring eccentricity in waveform models could introduce significant biases in parameter estimation and tests of general relativity. Upcoming LIGO-Virgo-KAGRA observing runs are expected to detect a subpopulation of eccentric signals, making it vital to develop accurate waveform models for eccentric orbits. Here, employing recent analytical results through the third post-Newtonian order, we develop seobnrv5ehm: a new time-domain, effective-one-body, multipolar waveform model for eccentric binary black holes with spins aligned (or antialigned) with the orbital angular momentum. Besides the dominant (2, 2) mode, the model includes the (2, 1), (3, 3), (3, 2), (4, 4), and (4, 3) modes. We validate the model’s accuracy by computing its unfaithfulness against 99 (28 public and 71 private) eccentric numerical-relativity (NR) simulations, produced by the Simulating eXtreme Spacetimes Collaboration. Importantly, for NR waveforms with initial GW eccentricities below 0.5, the maximum (2, 2)-mode unfaithfulness across the total mass range 20–200𝑀⊙ is consistently below or close to 1%, with a median value of ∼0.02%, reflecting an accuracy improvement of approximately an order of magnitude compared to the previous-generation seobnrv4ehm and the state-of-the-art teobresums-dalí eccentric model. In the quasi-circular-orbit limit, seobnrv5ehm is in excellent agreement with the highly accurate seobnrv5hm model. The accuracy, robustness, and speed of seobnrv5ehm make it suitable for data analysis and astrophysical studies. We demonstrate this by performing a set of recovery studies of synthetic NR-signal injections, and parameter-estimation analyses of the events GW150914 and GW190521, which we find to have no eccentricity signatures.
Copyright and License
Published by the American Physical Society under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International license. Further distribution of this work must maintain attribution to the author(s) and the published article’s title, journal citation, and DOI. Open access publication funded by the Max Planck Society.
Acknowledgement
We thank Guglielmo Faggioli, Nihar Gupte, Benjamin Leather, Oliver Long, Philip Lynch, Maarten van de Meent, and Peter James Nee for helpful discussions. It is with great appreciation that we thank Geraint Pratten, Md Arif Shaikh, Sylvain Marsat, Eleanor Hamilton, Shaun Nicholas Swain, and Yifan Wang for performing the LIGO-Virgo-KAGRA review of the seobnrv5ehm model. We also thank Rossella Gamba for her support in using the teobresums-dalí code. The computational work for this manuscript was carried out on the hypatia computer cluster at the Max Planck Institute for Gravitational Physics in Potsdam. Numerical-relativity simulations were performed at the Max Planck Computing and Data Facility on the Urania HPC system of the “Astrophysical and Cosmological Relativity” division. M. K.’s work is supported by Perimeter Institute for Theoretical Physics. Research at Perimeter Institute is supported in part by the Government of Canada through the Department of Innovation, Science and Economic Development and by the Province of Ontario through the Ministry of Colleges and Universities. A. Ramos-Buades is supported by the Veni research programme which is (partly) financed by the Dutch Research Council (NWO) under the Grant No. VI.Veni.222.396; acknowledges support from the Spanish Agencia Estatal de Investigación Grant No. PID2022-138626NB-I00 funded by MICIU/AEI/10.13039/501100011033 and the ERDF/EU; is supported by the Spanish Ministerio de Ciencia, Innovación y Universidades (Beatriz Galindo,
Data Availability
The data that support the findings of this article are not publicly available because they are owned by a third party and the terms of use prevent public distribution. The data are available from the authors upon reasonable request.
Supplemental Material
List of eccentric numerical-relativity simulations employed. For each simulation, we include an identifier, the mass-ratio, dimensionless spin components, gravitational-wave eccentricity, starting orbit-averaged frequency, number of periastron passages, and time to merger. We also list the input values of eccentricity and starting frequency obtained for each waveform model employed, as well as the corresponding mismatch.
Files
jxrc-z298.pdf
Files
(5.4 MB)
| Name | Size | Download all |
|---|---|---|
|
md5:34020aadccb48b5002ee363ed05997ab
|
80.9 kB | Preview Download |
|
md5:f14bd3cf32e74a42ae479c4b84ad4f4b
|
5.3 MB | Preview Download |
Additional details
Related works
- Is new version of
- Discussion Paper: arXiv:2412.12823 (arXiv)
Funding
- Perimeter Institute
- Government of Canada
- Innovation, Science and Economic Development Canada
- Ministry of Colleges and Universities
- Dutch Research Council
- VI.Veni.222.396
- Agencia Estatal de Investigación
- PID2022-138626NB-I00
- Ministerio de Ciencia, Innovación y Universidades
- European Commission
- Ministerio de Ciencia, Innovación y Universidades
- BG23/00056
- Universitat de les Illes Balears
- National Science Foundation
- PHY-2407742
- National Science Foundation
- PHY-2207342
- National Science Foundation
- OAC-2209655
- Sherman Fairchild Foundation
- Science and Technology Facilities Council
- Max Planck Society
- Australian Research Council
- European Gravitational Observatory
- Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique
- Istituto Nazionale di Fisica Nucleare
- Nikhef
- Ministry of Education, Culture, Sports, Science and Technology
- Japan Society for the Promotion of Science
- National Research Foundation of Korea
- Ministry of Science and ICT
- Academia Sinica
- National Science and Technology Council
Dates
- Accepted
-
2025-07-22