Horizon absorption in eccentric precessing binary black hole inspirals and its importance for gravitational wave data analysis

Abstract

During the evolution of a binary black hole, energy and angular momentum are exchanged between the orbital motion and the individual black holes through horizon absorption, modifying both the binary dynamics and the black hole masses and spins. This leaves an imprint on the emitted gravitational waves that may be relevant for the accurate modeling of signals observed by current and future detectors, while also offering a probe of the nature of compact objects. In this work, we derive, for the first time and at leading order in the post-Newtonian expansion, the effect of horizon absorption in binary black hole inspirals with both orbital eccentricity and spin-induced precession, and we incorporate these corrections into the pyEFPEHM waveform model. We then quantify their impact through analytical estimates of the orbital dephasing, waveform mismatches, and Bayesian parameter-estimation studies. The effect is largest for systems with large spin components (anti-)aligned with the orbital angular momentum ($|\vecχ_i \cdot \hat{l}| \sim 1$), highly unequal mass ratios ($q=m_2/m_1 \ll 1$), and long inspirals spanning a wide frequency range ($\log(f_\mathrm{max}/f_\mathrm{min}) \gg 1$). For such systems, neglecting horizon absorption biases the recovered binary parameters at moderate signal-to-noise ratios. In quasi-circular binaries these biases largely absorb the effect, rendering it difficult to detect. In eccentric binaries, however, the richer signal morphology breaks this degeneracy, making horizon absorption potentially measurable in high signal-to-noise-ratio events.