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arXiv · 2411.04187

Identifying Eccentricity in Binary Black Hole mergers using a Harmonic Decomposition of the Gravitational Waveform

Ben G. Patterson·Sharon Mary Tomson·Stephen Fairhurst
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Abstract

We show that the gravitational waveform emitted by a binary on an eccentric orbit can be naturally decomposed into a series of harmonics. The frequencies of these harmonics depend upon the radial frequency, $f_{\mathrm{r}}$, determined by the time to return to apoapsis, and the azimuthal frequency, $f_{\phi}$, determined by the time to complete one orbit relative to a fixed axis. These frequencies differ due to periapsis advance. Restricting to the (2, 2) multipole, we find that the frequencies can be expressed as $f = 2 f_{\phi} + k f_{\mathrm{r}}$. We introduce a straightforward method of generating these harmonics and show that the majority of the signal power is contained in the $k= -1, 0, 1$ harmonics for moderate eccentricities. We demonstrate that by filtering these three leading harmonics, we are able to obtain a good estimate of the orbital eccentricity from their relative amplitudes.

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Ben G. Patterson, Sharon Mary Tomson, Stephen Fairhurst. 2024-11-06. Identifying Eccentricity in Binary Black Hole mergers using a Harmonic Decomposition of the Gravitational Waveform. https://arxiv.org/abs/2411.04187

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