Evidence for orbital eccentricity supports a hierarchical origin for GW231123

Abstract

GW231123 is the most massive binary black hole merger observed to date and one of the most intriguing hierarchical merger candidates in the pair-instability mass gap. Its exceptionally large inferred component spins and remarkably short in-band duration make the source highly sensitive to waveform physics near merger. Here we show that GW231123 is better described as an eccentric binary black-hole merger. We analyse data over 11--448 Hz using the eccentric, spin-precessing effective-one-body waveform model TEOBResumS--Dalí, accounting for detector calibration uncertainty. We measure $e_{5.5\,\mathrm{Hz}}=0.34^{+0.12}_{-0.23}$ at 90\% credibility and obtain a Bayes factor of 10.2 in favour of the eccentric model over its quasi-circular counterpart. GW231123-like injection--recovery studies further show that analyses starting at 20 Hz, as in previous studies, can obscure this eccentricity. Including eccentricity substantially changes the spin inference, weakening the preference for a near-extremal secondary spin and lowering its posterior median to $a_2\simeq0.7$, close to the characteristic spin expected for a black-hole merger remnant. These results provide a coherent dynamical interpretation of GW231123, in which residual eccentricity, a mass-gap black hole, and a remnant-like spin arise naturally from a hierarchical merger channel in a dense environment.