Eccentric Black Hole-Neutron Star Mergers
  Within the next few years gravitational waves (GWs) from merging black holes
(BHs) and neutron stars (NSs) may be directly detected, making a thorough
theoretical understanding of these systems a high priority. As an additional
motivation, these systems may represent a subset of short-duration gamma-ray
burst (sGRB) progenitors. BH-NS mergers are expected to result from primordial,
quasi-circular inspiral as well as dynamically formed capture binaries. The
latter channel allows mergers with high eccentricity, resulting in a richer
variety of outcomes. We perform general relativistic simulations of BH-NS
interactions with a range of impact parameters, and find significant variation
in the properties of these events that have potentially observable
consequences, namely the GW signature, remnant accretion disk mass, and amount
of unbound material.
