Title: The Physics of Eccentric Binary Black Hole Mergers. A Numerical Relativity Perspective,
Abstract: Gravitational wave observations of eccentric binary black hole mergers will
provide unequivocal evidence for the formation of these systems through
dynamical assembly in dense stellar environments. The study of these
astrophysically motivated sources is timely in view of electromagnetic
observations, consistent with the existence of stellar mass black holes in the
globular cluster M22 and in the Galactic center, and the proven detection
capabilities of ground-based gravitational wave detectors. In order to get
insights into the physics of these objects in the dynamical, strong-field
gravity regime, we present a catalog of 89 numerical relativity waveforms that
describe binary systems of non-spinning black holes with mass-ratios $1\leq q
\leq 10$, and initial eccentricities as high as $e_0=0.18$ fifteen cycles
before merger. We use this catalog to provide landmark results regarding the
loss of energy through gravitational radiation, both for quadrupole and
higher-order waveform multipoles, and the astrophysical properties, final mass
and spin, of the post-merger black hole as a function of eccentricity and
mass-ratio. We discuss the implications of these results for gravitational wave
source modeling, and the design of algorithms to search for and identify the
complex signatures of these events in realistic detection scenarios.