English

Spin-orbit precession for eccentric black hole binaries at first order in the mass ratio

General Relativity and Quantum Cosmology 2017-03-31 v3

Abstract

We consider spin-orbit ("geodetic") precession for a compact binary in strong-field gravity. Specifically, we compute ψ\psi, the ratio of the accumulated spin-precession and orbital angles over one radial period, for a spinning compact body of mass m1m_1 and spin s1s_1, with s1Gm12/cs_1 \ll G m_1^2/c, orbiting a non-rotating black hole. We show that ψ\psi can be computed for eccentric orbits in both the gravitational self-force and post-Newtonian frameworks, and that the results appear to be consistent. We present a post-Newtonian expansion for ψ\psi at next-to-next-to-leading order, and a Lorenz-gauge gravitational self-force calculation for ψ\psi at first order in the mass ratio. The latter provides new numerical data in the strong-field regime to inform the Effective One-Body model of the gravitational two-body problem. We conclude that ψ\psi complements the Detweiler redshift zz as a key invariant quantity characterizing eccentric orbits in the gravitational two-body problem.

Keywords

Cite

@article{arxiv.1608.04811,
  title  = {Spin-orbit precession for eccentric black hole binaries at first order in the mass ratio},
  author = {Sarp Akcay and David Dempsey and Sam Dolan},
  journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:1608.04811},
  year   = {2017}
}

Comments

Matches the published version in CQG