Parameter estimation for the GWTC-4.0 catalog with phenomenological waveform models that include orbital eccentricity and an updated description of spin precession
Phys. Rev. D 113, 083001 – Published 1 April, 2026
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1103/w6vy-v8vz
Abstract
The GWTC-4.0 catalog of transient gravitational wave signals describes observations made in the first part of the fourth observing run of the LIGO-Virgo-KAGRA (LVK) gravitational wave detector network. Here we extend the LVK’s GWTC-4.0 analysis to elliptic orbits, and an improved description of spin precession in the frequency domain. For this study we use state-of-the-art waveforms from the IMRPhenom family (specifically XPNR, TPHM, and TEHM), and we consider the 84 confidently detected events that are consistent with binary-black-hole mergers. We present an extended catalog of updated posterior samples, quantify how incorporation of these waveform effects alters inferred source properties relative to previous analyses, and discuss waveform systematics.
