Eccentricity evolution of compact binaries and applications to gravitational-wave physics

Understand

Searches for gravitational waves from compact binaries focus mostly on quasi-circular motion, with the rationale that wave emission circularizes the orbit.

• Here, we study the generality of this result, when astrophysical environments (e.g., accretion disks) or other fundamental interactions are taken into account.
• We are motivated by possible electromagnetic counterparts to binary black hole coalescences and orbits, but also by the possible use of eccentricity as a smoking-gun for new physics.
• We find that: i) backreaction from radiative mechanisms, including scalars, vectors and gravitational waves circularize the orbital motion.