Gravitational self-force in extreme mass-ratio inspirals

By L. Barack. 2009

207 citations recorded by the source corpus.

This review is concerned with the gravitational self-force acting on a mass particle in orbit around a large black hole. Renewed interest in this old problem is driven by the prospects of detecting gravitational waves from strongly gravitating binaries with extreme mass ratios. We begin here with a summary of recent advances in the theory of gravitational self-interaction in curved spacetime, and proceed to survey some of the ideas and computational strategies devised for implementing this theory in the case of a particle orbiting a Kerr black hole. We review in detail two of these methods: (i) the standard mode-sum method, in which the metric perturbation is regularized mode-by-mode in a multipole decomposition, and (ii) m-mode regularization, whereby individual azimuthal modes of the metric perturbation are regularized in 2+1 dimensions. We discuss several practical issues that arise, including the choice of gauge, the numerical representation of the particle singularity, and how high-frequency contributions near the particle are dealt with in frequency-domain calculations. As an example of a full end-to-end implementation of the mode-sum method, we discuss the computation of the gravitational self-force for eccentric geodesic orbits in Schwarzschild, using a direct integration of the Lorenz-gauge perturbation equations in the time domain. With the computational framework now in place, researchers have recently turned to explore the physical consequences of the gravitational self-force; we will describe some preliminary results in this area. An appendix to this review presents, for the first time, a detailed derivation of the ‘regularization parameters’ necessary for implementing the mode-sum method in Kerr spacetime.

Subfields: Astronomy and Astrophysics

View Paper: https://www.semanticscholar.org/paper/2e81aebb4aa7b57765e3322eee371a19165f3058

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In Astronomy and Astrophysics

1. Paolo Pani
2. Rafael A. Porto
3. V. Cardoso
4. A. Pound
5. B. Wardell
6. D. Baumann
7. H. Chia
8. T. Damour

Citations in the corpus

• Black hole perturbation theory and gravitational self-force (2021, methodology): “[6, 205] provide detailed introductions to methods of computing the self-force.”
• The Motion of Point Particles in Curved Spacetime (2003, background): “A more detailed coverage of the various implementations can be found in Barack’s excellent review [9].”
• Stellar Dynamics and Stellar Phenomena Near a Massive Black Hole (2017, unknown): “See review by Barack 2009).”
• Gravitational self-force in a Schwarzschild background and the effective one-body formalism (2009, background): “[See [24, 25] for recent reviews of the GSF program.”
• Probing ultralight bosons with binary black holes (2018, methodology): “In the case of EMRIs, the evolution of the companion in the background of a supermassive BH can be obtained through perturbative self-force computations [147,148].”
• INTO THE LAIR: GRAVITATIONAL-WAVE SIGNATURES OF DARK MATTER (2013, background): “While such relativistic approach (together with including self-force effects (Poisson 2004; Barack 2009)) is crucial for generating accurate templates, no qualitatively new features will arise with respect to the case of inspiral around a massive BH.”