An Analytical Portrait of Binary Mergers in Hierarchical Triple Systems

TL;DR

This paper refines a semi-analytical model to predict the eccentricity distribution of binary black hole mergers in hierarchical triple systems, aiding the identification of their formation environments through gravitational wave observations.

Contribution

It improves the semi-analytical description of eccentricity distribution, reducing reliance on simulations, and enhances the ability to distinguish formation channels of binary mergers.

Findings

Refined the eccentricity distribution model for hierarchical triples

Reduced dependence on numerical simulations

Enhanced potential to identify formation environments

Abstract

With better statistics and precision, eccentricity could prove to be a useful tool for understanding the origin and environment of binary black holes. Hierarchical triples in particular, which might be abundant in globular clusters and galactic nuclei, could generate observably large eccentricity at LIGO and future gravitational wave detectors. Measuring the eccentricity distribution accurately could help us probe the background and the formation of the mergers. In this paper we continue our previous investigation and improve our semi-analytical description of the eccentricity distribution of mergers hierarchical triple systems. Our result, which further reduces the reliance on numerical simulations, could be useful for statistically distinguishing different formation channels of observed binary mergers.