The frequency spectrum of gravitational waves from eccentric orbits

Abstract

Gravitational waves emitted from binary black hole systems carry energy away from the orbit, and cause the black holes to spiral towards one another and eventually merge. While all such detected systems are effectively circular at coalescence, these binaries may start out with non-negligible eccentricity. Due to certain astrophysical phenomena, it is expected that some binary systems may merge with some residual eccentricity, and so understanding how to measure the waveforms from these systems are of particular interest for future third generation detectors, such as LISA.