Gravitational wave source localization for eccentric binary coalesce with a ground-based detector network

TL;DR

This paper systematically investigates how eccentricity in binary mergers affects gravitational wave source localization accuracy using ground-based detectors, revealing mass-dependent improvements in localization precision.

Contribution

It demonstrates that eccentricity can enhance source localization accuracy, especially for higher-mass binaries, by utilizing waveform features beyond arrival time differences.

Findings

Localization improves with eccentricity for high-mass binaries.

Improvement factor up to 2 for 100 solar mass binaries.

Minimal improvement for low-mass binaries like GW151226.

Abstract

Gravitational wave source localization problem is important in gravitational wave astronomy. Regarding ground-based detector, almost all of the previous investigations only considered the difference of arrival time among the detector network for source localization. Within the matched filtering framework, the information beside the arrival time difference can possibly also do some help on source localization. Especially when an eccentric binary is considered, the character involved in the gravitational waveform may improve the source localization. We investigate this effect systematically in the current paper. During the investigation, the enhanced post-circular (EPC) waveform model is used to describe the eccentric binary coalesce. We find that the source localization accuracy does increase along with the eccentricity increases. But such improvement depends on the total mass of the binary. For total mass 100M${}_\odot$ binary, the source localization accuracy may be improved about 2 times in general when the eccentricity increases from 0 to 0.4. For total mass 65M${}_\odot$ binary (GW150914-like binary), the improvement factor is about 1.3 when the eccentricity increases from 0 to 0.4. For total mass 22M${}_\odot$ binary (GW151226-like binary), such improvement is ignorable.