Searching for gravitational-wave signals emitted by eccentric compact binaries using a non-eccentric template bank: implications for ground-based detectors

TL;DR

This paper investigates how well non-eccentric gravitational-wave templates can detect signals from eccentric compact binaries in ground-based detectors, quantifying potential SNR loss and implications for current search methods.

Contribution

It provides a detailed analysis of the SNR loss when using non-eccentric templates to detect eccentric binary signals, updating previous work with current detector sensitivities.

Findings

Non-eccentric templates can detect some eccentric signals with reduced SNR.

Quantified the exact SNR loss for various eccentricities and detector configurations.

Implications for improving gravitational-wave search pipelines.

Abstract

Most of the inspiralling compact binaries are expected to be circularized by the time their gravitational-wave signals enter the frequency band of ground-based detectors such as LIGO or VIRGO. However, it is not excluded that some of these binaries might still possess a significant eccentricity at a few tens of hertz. Despite this possibility, current search pipelines based on matched filtering techniques consider only non-eccentric templates. The effect of such an approximation on the loss of signal-to-noise ratio (SNR) has been investigated by Martel and Poisson (1999 Phys. Rev. D 60 124008) in the context of initial LIGO detector. They ascertained that non-eccentric templates will be successful at detecting eccentric signals. We revisit their work by incorporating current and future ground-based detectors and precisely quantify the exact loss of SNR. In order to be more faithful to an actual search, we maximized the SNR over a template bank, whose minimal match is set to 95%. PACS numbers: 02.70.-c, 07.05.Kf, 95.85.Sz, 97.80.-d (Some figures in this article are in colour only in the electronic version)