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    Eccentric stellar-mass binary black holes: Population, detectability, and waveform analysis in the LISA and LIGO era

    Zeyuan Xuan* and Smadar Naoz

    Kyle Kremer

    Michael L. Katz

    Bence Kocsis

    Erez Michaely

    • Department of Physics and Astronomy, UCLA, Los Angeles, California 90095, USA and Mani L. Bhaumik Institute for Theoretical Physics, UCLA, Los Angeles, California 90095, USA

    • Jet Propulsion Laboratory, Pasadena, California 91109, USA and California Institute of Technology, Pasadena, California 91125, USA

    • Department of Physics and Astronomy, UCLA, Los Angeles, California 90095, USA

    • *Contact author: zeyuan.xuan@physics.ucla.edu

    Phys. Rev. D 114, 063036 – Published 18 September, 2026

    DOI: https://doi.org/10.1103/c654-vx1w

    Abstract

    Eccentric binary black holes (BBHs) formed through dynamical interactions can significantly contribute to gravitational wave (GW) detections. In this work, we present a simulated catalog of dynamically formed, stellar-mass BBHs in the local universe, incorporating contributions from the Galactic field (flyby interactions), Galactic nucleus (eccentric Kozai-Lidov evolution), and globular clusters (N-body interactions). Our results predict a wide, highly eccentric BBH population in the Milky Way, with source counts of ∼25, 9, 3, 1, and <1 for a 4-year LISA mission (∼36, 13, 5, 2, and 1 for a 10-year extended mission), for SNR>1, 3, 8, 20, and 50, respectively. Extending this model to cosmological populations, we show that different dynamical channels can produce distinct eccentricity distributions in the LVK band and can contribute hundreds of additional low-SNR mHz sources. Specifically, our model yields a merger rate of Γ∼9  Gpc−3 yr−1 and ∼150 extragalactic mHz BBHs with SNR>1. However, due to the lower mass and weaker GW signals of stellar-mass BBHs, this number declines sharply at higher detection thresholds (e.g., ∼1 for SNR>8). We further highlight the impact of eccentric BBH signals on the LISA global fit, showing that their individual harmonics can be independently detected in the Milky Way, and may mimic circular binaries with systematically biased chirp masses. Lastly, we show that post-Newtonian waveforms converge reliably for eccentric BBHs with masses of ≲103M⊙ in the mHz band. Overall, eccentric BBHs represent a prevalent and promising target for future space-based GW observatories.

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