English

Parameterizing black hole orbits for adiabatic inspiral

General Relativity and Quantum Cosmology 2024-03-28 v2 High Energy Astrophysical Phenomena

Abstract

Adiabatic binary inspiral in the small mass ratio limit treats the small body as moving along a geodesic of a large Kerr black hole, with the geodesic slowly evolving due to radiative backreaction. Up to initial conditions, geodesics are typically parameterized in two ways: using the integrals of motion energy EE, axial angular momentum LzL_z, and Carter constant QQ; or, using orbit geometry parameters semi-latus rectum pp, eccentricity ee, and (cosine of ) inclination xIcosIx_I \equiv \cos I. The community has long known how to compute orbit integrals as functions of the orbit geometry parameters, i.e., as functions expressing E(p,e,xI)E(p, e, x_I), and likewise for LzL_z and QQ. Mappings in the other direction -- functions p(E,Lz,Q)p(E, L_z, Q), and likewise for ee and xIx_I -- have not yet been developed in general. In this note, we develop generic mappings from (EE, LzL_z, QQ) to (pp, ee, xIx_I). The mappings are particularly simple for equatorial orbits (Q=0Q = 0, xI=±1x_I = \pm1), and can be evaluated efficiently for generic cases. These results make it possible to more accurately compute adiabatic inspirals by eliminating the need to use a Jacobian which becomes singular as inspiral approaches the last stable orbit.

Cite

@article{arxiv.2401.09577,
  title  = {Parameterizing black hole orbits for adiabatic inspiral},
  author = {Scott A. Hughes},
  journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:2401.09577},
  year   = {2024}
}

Comments

10 pages, 5 figures, version to appear in Physical Review D. Incorporates helpful feedback from the referee and a few other comments received since this paper was originally posted. Posting includes Mathematica notebook and C++ code which implements the methods developed in this paper

R2 v1 2026-06-28T14:19:49.052Z