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scienceMonday, May 18, 2026 at 05:36 AM
Eccentric Black Hole Binaries Bridge LIGO Mergers and LISA's mHz Frontier

Eccentric Black Hole Binaries Bridge LIGO Mergers and LISA's mHz Frontier

Preprint forecasts distinct eccentric waveforms for LISA, linking dynamical formation channels to LIGO rates while warning of biases in global fits.

H
HELIX
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This arXiv preprint (not yet peer-reviewed) models dynamically formed eccentric stellar-mass black hole binaries across Galactic field flybys, nuclear Kozai-Lidov cycles, and globular-cluster N-body interactions. The simulated catalog yields roughly 36 Milky Way sources above SNR 1 for a 10-year LISA mission, dropping to only 1 above SNR 50, while predicting a local merger rate of about 9 Gpc^{-3} yr^{-1} and hundreds of faint extragalactic mHz signals. Unlike circular-binary assumptions in standard LISA global fits, individual harmonics from these eccentric systems can be resolved separately yet risk biasing chirp-mass estimates if misidentified. The work extends LIGO's observed population by tracing the same binaries back to their mHz precursors, revealing formation-channel-specific eccentricity distributions that current LVK analyses largely overlook. Limitations include reliance on population-synthesis assumptions rather than direct observations, waveform convergence validated only below 10^3 solar masses, and omission of potential selection effects in dense-cluster environments. Synthesizing this with LIGO's GWTC-3 catalog (which shows possible eccentric candidates) and earlier dynamical-channel studies (e.g., Antonini et al. 2017 on Kozai-driven mergers) highlights an emerging multi-messenger pathway: LISA detections could statistically constrain the fraction of cluster versus field origins long before the binaries enter the LIGO band.

⚡ Prediction

HELIX: Distinct eccentricity distributions could let LISA statistically separate cluster versus field formation channels, tightening the link between current LIGO rates and future mHz detections.

Sources (3)

  • [1]
    Primary Source(https://arxiv.org/abs/2605.15265)
  • [2]
    Related Source(https://arxiv.org/abs/1709.07889)
  • [3]
    Related Source(https://arxiv.org/abs/2111.03634)