The NCSA eccentric gravitational waveform catalog

Gravitational wave observations of eccentric binary black hole mergers will provide unequivocal
evidence for the formation of binary black holes on eccentric orbits 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 ≤ q ≤ 10, and initial eccentricities as high as e₀ = 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.