Characterizing Spinning Black Hole Binaries in Eccentric Orbits with
  LISA
  The Laser Interferometer Space Antenna (LISA) is designed to detect
gravitational wave signals from astrophysical sources, including those from
coalescing binary systems of compact objects such as black holes. Colliding
galaxies have central black holes that sink to the center of the merged galaxy
and begin to orbit one another and emit gravitational waves. Some galaxy
evolution models predict that the binary black hole system will enter the LISA
band with significant orbital eccentricity, while other models suggest that the
orbits will already have circularized. Using a full seventeen parameter
waveform model that includes the effects of orbital eccentricity, spin
precession and higher harmonics, we investigate how well the source parameters
can be inferred from simulated LISA data. Defining the reference eccentricity
as the value one year before merger, we find that for typical LISA sources, it
will be possible to measure the eccentricity to an accuracy of parts in a
thousand. The accuracy with which the eccentricity can be measured depends only
very weakly on the eccentricity, making it possible to distinguish circular
orbits from those with very small eccentricities. LISA measurements of the
orbital eccentricity can help constraints theories of galaxy mergers in the
early universe. Failing to account for the eccentricity in the waveform
modeling can lead to a loss of signal power and bias the estimation of
parameters such as the black hole masses and spins.
