"Kludge" gravitational waveforms for a test-body orbiting a Kerr black hole

We present a new approximate method for constructing gravitational radiation driven inspirals of test-bodies orbiting Kerr black holes. Such orbits can be fully described by a semi-latus rectum $p$, an eccentricity $e$, and an inclination angle $\iota$; or, by an energy $E$, an angular momentum component $L_z$, and a third constant $Q$. Our scheme uses expressions that are exact (within an adiabatic approximation) for the rates of change ($\dot{p}$, $\dot{e}$, $\dot{\iota}$) ...

In this paper we discuss the development of a fast and accurate waveform model for the quasi-circular orbital evolution of extreme-mass-ratio-inspirals (EMRIs). This model simply employs the data of a few numerical Teukoulsky-based energy fluxes and waveforms to fit out a set of polynomials for the entire fluxes and waveforms. These obtained polynomials are accurate enough in the entire evolution domain, and much more accurate than the resummation post-Newtonian (PN) energy f...

The capture of compact stellar remnants by galactic black holes provides a unique laboratory for exploring the near horizon geometry of the Kerr spacetime, or possible departures from general relativity if the central cores prove not to be black holes. The gravitational radiation produced by these Extreme Mass Ratio Inspirals (EMRIs) encodes a detailed map of the black hole geometry, and the detection and characterization of these signals is a major scientific goal for the LI...

The space based interferometer LISA will be capable of detecting the gravitational waves emitted by stellar mass black holes or neutron stars slowly inspiralling into the supermassive black holes found in the centre of most galaxies. The gravitational wave signal from such an extreme mass ratio inspiral (EMRI) event will provide a unique opportunity to test whether the spacetime metric around the central black hole is well described by the Kerr solution. In this paper a well ...

We introduce a new kludge scheme to model the dynamics of generic extreme mass-ratio inspirals (stellar compact objects spiraling into a spinning supermassive black hole) and to produce the gravitational waveforms that describe the gravitational-wave emission of these systems. This scheme combines tools from different techniques in General Relativity: It uses a multipolar, post-Minkowskian (MPM) expansion for the far-zone metric perturbation (which provides the gravitational ...

Scattering events around a supermassive black hole will occasionally toss a stellar-mass compact object into an orbit around the supermassive black hole, beginning an extreme mass ratio inspiral. The early stages of such a highly eccentric orbit will not produce detectable gravitational waves as the source will only be in a suitable frequency band briefly when it is close to periapsis during each long-period orbit. This burst of emission, firmly in the millihertz band is the ...

We derive the approximate, ``analytic-kludge'' (AK) waveforms for the inspiral of a charged stellar-mass compact object (CO) into a charged massive Kerr-Newman (KN) black hole (BH). The modifications of the inspiral orbit due to the charges in this system can be attributed to three sources: the electric force between the CO and the MBH, the energy flow of the dipole electromagnetic radiation, and the deformation of the metric caused by the charge of the MBH. All these are enc...

We present {bhpwave}: a new Python-based, open-source tool for generating the gravitational waveforms of stellar-mass compact objects undergoing quasi-circular inspirals into rotating massive black holes. These binaries, known as extreme-mass-ratio inspirals (EMRIs), are exciting mHz gravitational wave sources for future space-based detectors such as LISA. Relativistic models of EMRI gravitational wave signals are necessary to unlock the full scientific potential of mHz detec...

To investigate the imprint on the gravitational-wave emission from extreme mass-ratio inspirals in non-pure Kerr spacetimes, we have studied the ``kludge'' waveforms generated in highly-accurate, numerically-generated spacetimes containing a black hole and a self-gravitating, homogeneous torus with comparable mass and spin. In order to maximize their impact on the produced waveforms, we have considered tori that are compact, massive and close to the central black hole, invest...

The merger of two black holes is one of the most extraordinary events in the natural world. Made of pure gravity, the holes combine to form a single hole, emitting a strong burst of gravitational radiation. Ground-based detectors are currently searching for such bursts from holes formed in the evolution of binary stars, and indeed the very first gravitational wave event detected may well be a black-hole merger. The space-based LISA detector is being designed to search for suc...