Highly eccentric inspirals into a black hole
We model the inspiral of a compact stellar-mass object into a massive nonrotating black hole including all dissipative and conservative first-order-in-the-mass-ratio effects on the orbital motion. The techniques we develop allow inspirals with initial eccentricities as high as e~0.8 and initial sepa...
| Main Authors: | , , |
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| Other Authors: | |
| Format: | Article |
| Language: | English |
| Published: |
American Physical Society
2016
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| Online Access: | http://hdl.handle.net/1721.1/101775 |
| Summary: | We model the inspiral of a compact stellar-mass object into a massive nonrotating black hole including all dissipative and conservative first-order-in-the-mass-ratio effects on the orbital motion. The techniques we develop allow inspirals with initial eccentricities as high as e~0.8 and initial separations as large as p~50 to be evolved through many thousands of orbits up to the onset of the plunge into the black hole. The inspiral is computed using an osculating elements scheme driven by a hybridized self-force model, which combines Lorenz-gauge self-force results with highly accurate flux data from a Regge-Wheeler-Zerilli code. The high accuracy of our hybrid self-force model allows the orbital phase of the inspirals to be tracked to within ~0.1 radians or better. The difference between self-force models and inspirals computed in the radiative approximation is quantified. |
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