English

Revisiting GW150914 with a non-planar, eccentric waveform model

General Relativity and Quantum Cosmology 2025-09-03 v2 High Energy Astrophysical Phenomena

Abstract

The first direct detection of gravitational waves by the LIGO collaboration, GW150914, marked the start of a new exciting era in astronomy, enabling the study of the Universe through a new messenger. Since then, the field has grown rapidly, with the development of increasingly more sophisticated techniques to detect, analyze and interpret the signals. In this paper we revisit GW150914, presenting updated estimates of its source parameters using a waveform model developed within the EOB formalism, able to describe gravitational-wave emission from generic non-circular, non-planar binaries. We provide a comprehensive analysis of the signal and its properties, considering and contrasting various scenarios for the source: from the simplest, aligned-spin quasi-circular binary black hole merger, to more complex scenarios, including precession, eccentricity or both. Unsurprisingly, we find that the signal is consistent with a quasi-circular (e<0.08e < 0.08 at 1515 Hz), slowly spinning (χeff=0.030.13+0.12)(\chi_{\rm eff} = -0.03^{+0.12}_{-0.13}) binary black hole merger, a-posteriori validating a considerable body of works. This is the first analysis performed with an inspiral-merger-ringdown model containing both eccentricity and precession.

Keywords

Cite

@article{arxiv.2505.21612,
  title  = {Revisiting GW150914 with a non-planar, eccentric waveform model},
  author = {Rossella Gamba and Jacob Lange and Danilo Chiaramello and Jacopo Tissino and Snehal Tibrewal},
  journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:2505.21612},
  year   = {2025}
}

Comments

13 pages, 6 figures; version accepted for publication

R2 v1 2026-07-01T02:44:13.996Z