1. Identifying Eccentricity in Binary Black Hole mergers using a Harmonic Decomposition of the Gravitational Waveform
- Author
-
Patterson, Ben G., Tomson, Sharon Mary, and Fairhurst, Stephen
- Subjects
General Relativity and Quantum Cosmology ,Astrophysics - High Energy Astrophysical Phenomena - 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., Comment: 21 pages, 12 figures
- Published
- 2024