Correlations in gravitational-wave reconstructions from eccentric binaries: A case study with GW151226 and GW170608

Abstract: The eccentricity of binary black-hole mergers is predicted to be an indicator of the history of their formation. In particular, eccentricity is a strong signature of dynamical formation rather than formation by stellar evolution in isolated stellar systems. We investigate the efficacy of the existing quasicircular parameter estimation pipelines to determine the source parameters of such eccentric systems. We create a set of simulated signals with eccentricity up to 0.3 and find that as the eccentricity increases, the recovered mass parameters are consistent with those of a binary with up to a $\simeq 10\%$ higher chirp mass and mass ratio closer to unity. We also employ a full inspiral-merger-ringdown waveform model to perform parameter estimation on two gravitational wave events, GW151226 and GW170608, to investigate this bias on real data. We find that the correlation between the masses and eccentricity persists in real data, but that there is also a correlation between the measured eccentricity and effective spin. In particular, using a nonspinning prior results in a spurious eccentricity measurement for GW151226 as it exhibits signs of nonzero black-hole spin. Performing parameter estimation with an aligned spin, eccentric model, we constrain the eccentricities of GW151226 and GW170608 to be $<0.15$ and $<0.12$ respectively.