Effective-one-body modeling of eccentric supermassive black hole binaries for pulsar timing arrays
Phys. Rev. D 114, 024036 – Published 14 July, 2026
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1103/k2n3-856y
Abstract
Pulsar timing arrays (PTAs) observations will detect gravitational waves (GWs) from the early inspiral phase of supermassive black hole binaries (SMBHBs) with orbital periods of weeks to years. Current PTA analyses generally assume circular binaries; however, dynamical interactions with the surrounding environment can prevent complete circularization, allowing SMBHBs to retain appreciable eccentricities. In this work, we present a gravitational waveform model for eccentric binaries based on the effective-one-body (EOB) formalism, designed for continuous GW searches in PTA data. The model is accurate up to the second post-Newtonian (2PN) order for the conservative dynamics and up to postleading order for the radiation-reaction terms. We provide both a numerically precise and a computationally efficient approximate implementation and evaluate the latter’s accuracy against the full model over a broad range of eccentricities and initial orbital frequencies. Our results show that a substantial region of the parameter space exhibits pronounced orbital evolution, much stronger than in the circular case. We demonstrate the rich harmonic structure of timing residuals induced by eccentric GWs. Properly characterizing eccentric binaries is an essential step toward detecting GWs in PTA data and interpreting the results, ultimately improving our understanding of the supermassive black hole population in the local Universe.
