Résumé / Abstract Journal-club_GReCO

Séminaire / Seminar GReCO

« Celestial Mechanics in Kerr Spacetime »

Alexandre Le Tiec
Obs. Paris-Meudon-Nancay (Paris, France)

The inspiral of a stellar-mass compact object into a supermassive black hole is a promising source of gravitational waves for a future space-based detector such as the proposed eLISA mission. To properly model the gravitational-wave emission from such extreme mass ratio inspirals, the effects of the small body's gravitational field on its own motion -- known as the gravitational self-force (GSF) -- have to be taken into account. In this talk, I will present a Hamiltonian formulation of the orbital motion of a small compact body in the Kerr geometry that takes into account all of the conservative effects of the GSF. In particular, I will explain how the dynamics can be neatly encapsulated into an effective Hamiltonian that depends only on the constants of motion. This effective Hamiltonian is used, in particular, to derive the conservative GSF correction to the orbital frequencies of the innermost stable circular orbits of a Kerr black hole, as well as a "first law of mechanics" for binary black hole systems that holds at leading order beyond the test-mass approximation.
lundi 21 novembre 2016 - 11:00
Salle des séminaires Évry Schatzman
Institut d'Astrophysique de Paris
Pages web du séminaire / Seminar's webpage