Department of Astronomy Center for Radiophysics & Space Research

Formation of eccentric black hole gravitational wave mergers

25Wednesday, Oct. 25
Johan Samsing (Princeton)
12:15 PM
622 Space Sciences

I will show that a non negligible fraction of black hole binary mergers forming in stellar clusters, will appear in the LIGO band with an eccentricity >0.1. All previous studies have argued that eccentric GW sources are not likely, however, with a consistent implementation of post-Newtonian terms in the N-body equation of motion, I show that the real fraction is likely a factor of 100 times higher than previously thought. This brings the fraction of eccentric GW mergers up to about 5%. This has profound implications for mapping out the dynamical universe through the detection of GW black hole mergers.