Measurability of precession and eccentricity for heavy binary-black-hole mergers

Understand

Gravitational wave detections offer insights into the astrophysical populations of black holes in the universe and their formation processes.

• Detections of binaries consisting of black holes lying outside the bulk distribution of the astrophysical population are particularly intriguing.
• In this study, we perform an injection analysis within the intermediate-mass black hole range, utilizing the NR surrogate model NRSur7dq4 and a selection of NR waveforms from the SXS and RIT catalogues.
• Our investigation focuses on the detectability of precession and its potential degeneracy with eccentricity, especially for short signals with only a few cycles in band.