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Merger remnant and eccentricity dynamics surrogates for eccentric nonspinning black hole binaries

Adhrit Ravichandran1,*, Peter James Nee2, Keefe Mitman3, Tousif Islam4, Scott E. Field1, Vijay Varma1, Michael Boyle3, Andrea Ceja5,6, Nils Deppe7,8,3 et al.

Noora Ghadiri9, Lawrence E. Kidder3, Prayush Kumar10, Marlo Morales5, Jordan Moxon11, Kyle C. Nelli11, Harald P. Pfeiffer2, Antoni Ramos-Buades12, Katie Rink13, Hannes R. Rüter14, Mark A Scheel15, Md Arif Shaikh16, Leo C. Stein17, Daniel Tellez5, William Throwe3, and Nils L. Vu11

  • *Contact author: aravichandran@umassd.edu
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Phys. Rev. D 114, 084065 – Published 21 October, 2026

DOI: https://doi.org/10.1103/br26-x8db

Abstract

Accurate models of merger remnants are increasingly important for gravitational-wave science, including precision tests of gravity with ringdown, inference of black-hole populations, and modeling hierarchical mergers. For eccentric binaries, remnant mass, spin, and recoil carry nontrivial imprints of eccentricity that are both physically informative and more challenging to model, yet remain less developed than in the quasicircular case. We present two new models trained on numerical-relativity (NR) simulations of unequal-mass, nonspinning eccentric binary black holes: NRSurE_q4NoSpin_Remnant, which predicts remnant properties, and NRSurE_q4NoSpin_Dynamics, a time-domain surrogate for the evolution of eccentricity and mean anomaly. Both models are trained on NR simulations over a three-dimensional parameter space with mass ratios q≤4, eccentricity e<0.23, and mean anomaly ℓ∈[0,2π) radians, where both e and ℓ are defined at t=−1000M relative to peak amplitude and M is the total mass. We highlight some applications, including the phenomenological impact of eccentricity on remnant properties and the enhancement or suppression of recoil. We also provide error estimates for all modeled quantities, supporting reliable use in current and future gravitational-wave parameter-estimation analyses. Both models will be made available through open-source codes.

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Phys. Rev. D 114, 084065– Published 21 October, 2026
  • Received 22 May 2026
  • Accepted 3 September 2026
Article part of CHORUS
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