Eccentric Black Hole-Neutron Star Mergers

Understand

Within the next few years gravitational waves (GWs) from merging black holes (BHs) and neutron stars (NSs) may be directly detected, making a thorough theoretical understanding of these systems a high priority.

• As an additional motivation, these systems may represent a subset of short-duration gamma-ray burst (sGRB) progenitors.
• BH-NS mergers are expected to result from primordial, quasi-circular inspiral as well as dynamically formed capture binaries.
• The latter channel allows mergers with high eccentricity, resulting in a richer variety of outcomes.