English

Carter's constant revealed

General Relativity and Quantum Cosmology 2009-05-12 v3 Astrophysics

Abstract

A new formulation of Carter's constant for geodesic motion in Kerr black holes is given. It is shown that Carter's constant corresponds to the total angular momentum plus a precisely defined part which is quadratic in the linear momenta. The characterization is exact in the weak field limit obtained by letting the gravitational constant go to zero. It is suggested that the new form can be useful in current studies of the dynamics of extreme mass ratio inspiral (EMRI) systems emitting gravitational radiation.

Keywords

Cite

@article{arxiv.0710.4260,
  title  = {Carter's constant revealed},
  author = {Kjell Rosquist and Tomas Bylund and Lars Samuelsson},
  journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:0710.4260},
  year   = {2009}
}

Comments

Minor changes to match published version

R2 v1 2026-06-21T09:35:05.785Z