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Gravitational waves from eccentric binary neutron star mergers: Systematic biases and inadequacy of quasicircular templates

Giulia Huez1,*, Sebastiano Bernuzzi1, Matteo Breschi1, and Rossella Gamba2,3

  • *Contact author: giulia.huez@uni-jena.de
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Phys. Rev. D 112, 084054 – Published 22 October, 2025

DOI: https://doi.org/10.1103/mc64-1jtd

Abstract

The use of quasicircular waveforms in matched-filter analyses of signals from eccentric binary neutron star (BNS) mergers can lead to biases in the source’s parameter estimation. We demonstrate that significant biases can be present already for moderate eccentricities e0≳0.05 and signals detected by LIGO-Virgo-KAGRA with signal-to-noise ratio (SNR) ≳12. We perform systematic Bayesian mock analyses of unequal-mass nonspinning BNS signals up to eccentricities e0∼0.1 using quasicircular effective-one-body (EOB) waveforms with spins. We find fractional SNR losses up to tens of percent and up to 16σ deviations in the inference of the chirp mass. The latter effect is sufficiently large to lead to an incorrect (and ambiguous) source identification. The inclusion of spin precession in the quasicircular waveform does not capture eccentricity effects. We conclude that high-precision observations with advanced (and next generation) detectors are likely to require standardized, accurate, and fast eccentric waveforms.

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Phys. Rev. D 112, 084054– Published 22 October, 2025
  • Received 28 May 2025
  • Accepted 25 September 2025
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Published by the American Physical Society under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International license. Further distribution of this work must maintain attribution to the author(s) and the published article’s title, journal citation, and DOI.

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