Gravitational waves from compact binaries inspiralling along post-Newtonian accurate eccentric orbits: Data analysis implications

TL;DR

This paper investigates how well existing gravitational wave search templates detect signals from eccentric compact binary inspirals modeled with post-Newtonian accuracy, highlighting the need for improved templates for eccentric signals.

Contribution

It demonstrates the inefficiency of current circular templates in capturing eccentric inspiral signals and emphasizes the necessity for developing more accurate templates for eccentric orbits.

Findings

Circular templates are effective for circular inspirals.

Eccentric signals are poorly captured by existing templates.

Further research needed for eccentric waveform templates.

Abstract

Compact binaries inspiralling along eccentric orbits are plausible gravitational wave (GW) sources for the ground-based laser interferometers. We explore the losses in the event rates incurred when searching for GWs from compact binaries inspiralling along post-Newtonian accurate eccentric orbits with certain obvious non-optimal search templates. For the present analysis, GW signals having 2.5 post-Newtonian accurate orbital evolution are modeled following the phasing formalism, presented in [T. Damour, A. Gopakumar, and B. R. Iyer, Phys. Rev. D \textbf{70}, 064028 (2004)]. We demonstrate that the search templates that model in a gauge-invariant manner GWs from compact binaries inspiralling under qudrupolar radiation reaction along 2PN accurate circular orbits are very efficient in capturing our somewhat realistic GW signals. However, three types of search templates based on the adiabatic, complete adiabatic and gauge-dependent complete non-adiabatic approximants, detailed in [P. Ajith, B. R. Iyer, C. A. K. Robinson and B. S. Sathyaprakash, %``A new class of post-Newtonian approximants to the dynamics of inspiralling %compact binaries: Test-mass in the Schwarzschild spacetime,'' Phys. Rev. D {\bf 71}, 044029 (2005)], relevant for the circular inspiral under the qudrupolar radiation reaction were found to be inefficient in capturing the above mentioned eccentric signal. We conclude that further investigations will be required to probe the ability of various types of PN accurate circular templates, employed to analyze the LIGO/VIRGO data, to capture GWs from compact binaries having tiny orbital eccentricities.