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arXiv · 2512.19513

Parameter estimation for the GWTC-4.0 catalog with phenomenological waveform models that include orbital eccentricity and an updated description of spin precession

Yumeng Xu·Jorge Valencia·Héctor Estellés Estrella·Antoni Ramos Buades·Sascha Husa·Maria Rosselló-Sastre·Joan Llobera Querol·Felip Ramis Vidal·Maria de Lluc Planas Llompart·Marta Colleoni·Eleanor Hamilton·Arnau Montava Agudo·Jesús Yébana Carrilero·Anna Heffernan
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Abstract

The GWTC-4.0 catalog of transient gravitational wave signals describes observations made in the first part of the fourth observing run of the LIGO-Virgo-KAGRA (LVK) gravitational wave detector network. Here we extend the LVK's GWTC-4.0 analysis to elliptic orbits, and an improved description of spin precession in the frequency domain. For this study we use state-of-the-art waveforms from the IMRPhenom family (specifically XPNR, TPHM, and TEHM), and we consider the 84 confidently detected events that are consistent with binary-black-hole mergers. We present an extended catalog of updated posterior samples, quantify how incorporation of these waveform effects alters inferred source properties relative to previous analyses, and discuss waveform systematics.

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Yumeng Xu, Jorge Valencia, Héctor Estellés Estrella, Antoni Ramos Buades, Sascha Husa, Maria Rosselló-Sastre, Joan Llobera Querol, Felip Ramis Vidal, Maria de Lluc Planas Llompart, Marta Colleoni, Eleanor Hamilton, Arnau Montava Agudo, Jesús Yébana Carrilero, Anna Heffernan. 2025-12-22. Parameter estimation for the GWTC-4.0 catalog with phenomenological waveform models that include orbital eccentricity and an updated description of spin precession. https://doi.org/10.1103/w6vy-v8vz

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