Abstract
The recent detections of GW150914 and GW151226 imply an abundance of stellar-mass binary black hole (BBH) mergers in the local universe. While ground-based gravitational wave detectors are limited to observing the final moments before a binary merges, space-based detectors, such as the Laser Interferometer Space Antenna (LISA), can observe binaries at lower orbital frequencies where such systems may still encode information about their formation histories. In particular, the orbital eccentricity and mass of BBHs in the LISA frequency band can be used together to discriminate between binaries formed in isolation in galactic fields and those formed in dense stellar environments such as globular clusters. In this letter, we explore the orbital eccentricity and mass of BBH populations as they evolve through the LISA frequency band. Overall we find that there are two distinct populations discernible by LISA. We show that up to of binaries formed either dynamically or in isolation have eccentricities that are measurable with LISA. Finally, we note how measured eccentricities of low-mass BBHs evolved in isolation could provide detailed constraints on the physics of black hole natal kicks and common-envelope evolution.
| Original language | English (US) |
|---|---|
| Article number | L18 |
| Journal | Astrophysical Journal Letters |
| Volume | 830 |
| Issue number | 1 |
| DOIs | |
| State | Published - Oct 10 2016 |
Funding
K.B. and S.L.L. acknowledge support from NASA grant NNX13AM10G. C.R. and F.A.R. acknowledge support from NSF grant AST-1312945 and from NASA grant NNX14AP92G. V.K. acknowledges support from NSF grant PHY-1307020/002 and from Northwestern University. V.K. and F.A.R. also acknowledge support from NSF grant PHY- 1066293 at the Aspen Center for Physics.
Keywords
- globular clusters: general
- gravitational waves
- stars: black holes
ASJC Scopus subject areas
- Astronomy and Astrophysics
- Space and Planetary Science