Eccentric compact binaries: modeling the inspiral and gravitational wave emission

Abstract

The modeling of the inpsiral and subsequent gravitational wave emission from black hole binary systems has been a long outstanding problem in astrophysics and relativity. Astrophysical models predict that most binaries will have low orbital eccentricity by the time the gravitational wave emission enters the detection band of ground based detectors, and significant success has been made by restricting attention to the this limit, where the binary's orbit is approximately circular. However, exotic formation channels in globular clusters and galactic nuclei predict a small, but non-negligible, fraction of systems will enter the detection band of ground-based detectors with significant orbital eccentricity. In this thesis, we present new methods of modeling eccentric binaries under the influence of gravitational wave emission, focusing on two regimes: (i) the early inspiral of highly eccentric binaries, and (ii) the late inspiral of generic eccentric binaries.