Pith. sign in

REVIEW 15 cited by

GW190521: orbital eccentricity and signatures of dynamical formation in a binary black hole merger signal

Not yet reviewed by Pith; the record is open.

Re-run · record.json Download PDF Read on arXiv ↗

This paper has not been read by Pith yet. Machine review is queued; the pith claim, tier, and objections will appear here once it completes.

SPECIMEN: schema-true, not a live event

T0 review · schema-true

One-sentence machine reading of the paper's core claim.

pith:XXXXXXXX · record.json · timestamp

arxiv 2009.04771 v3 pith:6YZGYN7R submitted 2020-09-10 astro-ph.HE

Isobel M. Romero-Shaw , Paul D. Lasky , Eric Thrane , Juan Calderon Bustillo This is my paper · ORCID
classification astro-ph.HE
keywords binaryblackgw190521eccentricityformationquasi-circularsignaldynamical
verification ladder T0 review T1 audit T2 compute T3 formal
0 comments
abstract

Pair instability supernovae are thought to restrict the formation of black holes in the mass range ~50 - 135 solar masses. However, black holes with masses within this "high mass gap" are expected to form as the remnants of binary black hole mergers. These remnants can merge again dynamically in densely populated environments such as globular clusters. The hypothesis that the binary black hole merger GW190521 formed dynamically is supported by its high mass. Orbital eccentricity can also be a signature of dynamical formation, since a binary that merges quickly after becoming bound may not circularize before merger. In this work, we measure the orbital eccentricity of GW190521. We find that the data prefer a signal with eccentricity $e \geq 0.1$ at 10 Hz to a non-precessing, quasi-circular signal, with a log Bayes factor $\ln{\cal B}=5.0$. When compared to precessing, quasi-circular analyses, the data prefer a non-precessing, $e \geq 0.1$ signal, with log Bayes factors $\ln{\cal B}\approx2$. Using injection studies, we find that a non-spinning, moderately eccentric ($e = 0.13$) GW190521-like binary can be mistaken for a quasi-circular, precessing binary. Conversely, a quasi-circular binary with spin-induced precession may be mistaken for an eccentric binary. We therefore cannot confidently determine whether GW190521 was precessing or eccentric. Nevertheless, since both of these properties support the dynamical formation hypothesis, our findings support the hypothesis that GW190521 formed dynamically.

Discussion (0). Continue with ORCID to comment.

Forward citations

Cited by 15 Pith papers

Reviewed papers in the Pith corpus that reference this work. Sorted by Pith novelty score. Full citation record

  1. Constraints on Line-of-Sight Acceleration from O1-O4

    astro-ph.HE 2026-06 unverdicted novelty 7.0 of 10

    All known compact binary mergers show line-of-sight accelerations consistent with zero under a new time-domain Doppler-shift model, with current detectors only sensitive to high-acceleration scenarios.

  2. Trails of clouds in binary black holes

    gr-qc 2025-12 conditional novelty 7.0 of 10

    Boson clouds around binary black holes generically deplete through orbital resonances, driving eccentricity and spin-orbit tilt toward fixed points—including off-equatorial ones—leaving observable gravitational-wave trails.

  3. Third post-Newtonian dynamics for eccentric orbits and aligned spins in the effective-one-body waveform model SEOBNRv5EHM

    gr-qc 2024-12 conditional novelty 7.0 of 10

    The authors obtain, for the first time, 3PN-accurate eccentric-orbit fluxes, radiation-reaction force, and waveform modes in the effective-one-body formalism, and use them to build the SEOBNRv5EHM inspiral model.

  4. Accurate waveforms for eccentric, aligned-spin binary black holes: The multipolar effective-one-body model SEOBNRv5EHM

    gr-qc 2024-12 conditional novelty 7.0 of 10

    SEOBNRv5EHM, a new effective-one-body waveform model with third-post-Newtonian eccentricity corrections, reaches a median 0.02% mismatch against eccentric numerical-relativity simulations, about an order of magnitude ...

  5. A parametrized test of general relativity for inspiralling eccentric binaries in LISA

    gr-qc 2026-08 conditional novelty 6.0 of 10

    For eccentric black-hole binaries observed by LISA, a parametrized deformation of the periastron-precession rate could be constrained to |δα|≲10^-4 at 90% credibility with the full-model template.

  6. Probability of gravitational-wave lensing by intermediate-mass black holes and globular clusters

    astro-ph.CO 2026-08 conditional novelty 6.0 of 10

    The rate of compound gravitational-wave lensing by intermediate-mass black holes in globular clusters is at most about 10^-3 of galaxy-scale lensed events, disfavoring GW231123 as such an event.

  7. Assessing the waveform systematics from parameter estimation to population inference with eccentricity

    astro-ph.HE 2026-07 conditional novelty 6.0 of 10

    Eccentric waveform-model differences, small per event, accumulate across the GWTC-4 catalog and alter inferred redshift evolution and effective-spin population distributions.

  8. Can Eccentric Binary Black Hole Signals Mimic Gravitational-Wave Microlensing?

    gr-qc 2025-12 conditional novelty 6.0 of 10

    Eccentric BBH signals can masquerade as wave-optics microlensing in quasicircular analyses, but eccentric recovery templates break the degeneracy.

  9. Accelerated Sequential Posterior Inference via Reuse for Gravitational-Wave Analyses

    hep-ex 2025-11 conditional novelty 6.0 of 10

    ASPIRE reuses old posterior samples via normalizing flows and sequential Monte Carlo to produce unbiased posteriors and evidences under new models, cutting likelihood evaluations 4-10x.

  10. Chase Orbits, not Time: A Scalable Paradigm for Long-Duration Eccentric Gravitational-Wave Surrogates

    gr-qc 2025-09 conditional novelty 6.0 of 10

    Eccentric inspiral waveforms are modeled against mean anomaly rather than time, yielding an order-of-magnitude compression and a 2.77e6 M surrogate that is ~20x faster to evaluate.

  11. Discovering gravitational waveform distortions from lensing: A deep dive into GW231123

    gr-qc 2025-12 conditional novelty 5.0 of 10

    GW231123's apparent gravitational-lensing signal has a false-alarm probability around 4σ, so the event cannot be claimed as lensed under the two-image wave-optics model.

  12. Potential science with GW250114 -- the loudest binary black hole merger detected to date

    gr-qc 2025-07 conditional novelty 5.0 of 10

    This simulation study forecasts that GW250114 can reveal measurable orbital eccentricity, decisive ringdown overtones, and tight black hole area theorem constraints.

  13. Eccentricity Effects on Modeling Dynamic Quantities and Their Correlations in Binary Black Hole Mergers

    gr-qc 2025-01 conditional novelty 5.0 of 10

    Varying the initial orbital phase of an eccentric binary black hole at fixed eccentricity produces an envelope of radiated energy, momentum, and spin, so eccentric mergers span broad domains of remnant properties rela...

  14. Inferring additional physics through unmodelled signal reconstructions

    gr-qc 2024-12 conditional novelty 5.0 of 10

    A cWB overlap mismatch metric, Δmedian, separates simulated 40 solar mass black hole mergers with e20 ≳ 0.17 from circular ones even when parameter estimation uses only quasicircular waveforms.

  15. The first decade of gravitational-wave measurements of black hole spins

    gr-qc 2026-06 unverdicted novelty 1.0 of 10

    A review summarizing formation-channel predictions, waveform effects, and population-level constraints on stellar-mass black hole spins from the first decade of gravitational-wave observations.

Pith tools