Defining eccentricity for spin-precessing binaries
Abstract
Standardizing the definition of eccentricity is necessary for unambiguous inference of the orbital eccentricity of compact binaries from gravitational wave observations. In previous works, we proposed a definition of eccentricity for systems without spin-precession that relies solely on the gravitational waveform, is applicable to any waveform model, and has the correct Newtonian limit. In this work, we extend this definition to spin-precessing systems. This simple yet effective extension relies on first transforming the waveform from the inertial frame to the coprecessing frame, and then adopting an amplitude and a phase with reduced spin-induced effects. Our method includes a robust procedure for filtering out spin-induced modulations, which become non-negligible in the small eccentricity and large spin-precession regime. Finally, we apply our method to a set of Numerical Relativity and Effective One Body waveforms to showcase its robustness for generic eccentric spin-precessing binaries. We make our method public via Python implementation in \texttt{gw\_eccentricity}.
Keywords
Cite
@article{arxiv.2507.08345,
title = {Defining eccentricity for spin-precessing binaries},
author = {Md Arif Shaikh and Vijay Varma and Antoni Ramos-Buades and Harald P. Pfeiffer and Michael Boyle and Lawrence E. Kidder and Mark A. Scheel},
journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:2507.08345},
year = {2025}
}
Comments
35 pages, 16 + 4 figures