Abstract

The radiation of linear momentum imparts a recoil (or “kick”) to the center of mass of a merging black hole binary system. In 2019, numerical relativity calculations showed that the addition of orbital eccentricity can lead to an approximate 25% increase in recoil velocities for equal-mass, spinning binaries with spins lying in the orbital plane (“superkick” configurations) arXiv:1910.01598]. I will present recent results [arXiv:2101.11015] obtained from numerical simulations investigating the impact of nonzero eccentricity on the kick magnitude and gravitational-wave emission of nonspinning, unequal-mass black hole binaries. Like the spinning case, nonzero eccentricities at merger can lead to kicks which are larger by up to ~25% relative to the quasicircular case. However, we also find that the kick velocity has an oscillatory dependence on the eccentricity. I will discuss our interpretation of this phenomenon and our observations.