Bayesian analysis of late-time tails in spin-aligned eccentric binary black hole mergers

TL;DR

This paper analyzes late-time gravitational wave tails from eccentric, spin-aligned binary black hole mergers using high-precision simulations, confirming theoretical tail decay rates and sharing a new analysis tool.

Contribution

It introduces a comprehensive Bayesian and frequentist analysis of gravitational wave tails in eccentric, spin-aligned black hole mergers, validated against theoretical predictions.

Findings

Tail exponents approach predicted asymptotic values

Modes with same $$ share tail exponents

Analysis framework is publicly available

Abstract

We present a comprehensive analysis of late-time tails in gravitational radiation from merging spin-aligned eccentric binary black holes, using high-accuracy point-particle black hole perturbation theory simulations. We simulate the late-time evolution of 15 binary black hole mergers with mass ratio $q = 1000$, dimensionless spins $\chi = [-0.9, -0.6, 0.0, 0.6, 0.9]$ and eccentricity at the last stable orbit $e_{\rm LSO} = [0.8, 0.9, 0.95]$. We track the tail amplitudes and exponents up to a retarded time coordinate $t = 9000M$ after merger for the six spin-weighted spherical harmonic modes $(2,1)$, $(2,2)$, $(3,2)$, $(3,3)$, $(4,3)$, and $(4,4)$ employing both frequentist and Bayesian approaches. We note that the tails are increasingly pronounced for binaries with high eccentricity $e_{\rm LSO}$ and large negative spin $\chi$. We find that the overall late-time exponents closely approach their predicted asymptotic values ($p=-\ell-4$ for Weyl curvature scalar $\psi_{4,\ell m}$ where $\ell$ is the spin-weighted spherical harmonic index), while estimates restricted to the latest portion of the data exactly recover them. We further verify numerically that modes with the same spherical index $\ell$ share identical tail exponents, while variations in $m$ do not affect the tail behavior. Our analysis framework is publicly available through the gwtails Python package.