Imprint of Accretion Disk-Induced Migration on Gravitational Waves from Extreme Mass Ratio Inspirals

We study the effects of a thin gaseous accretion disk on the inspiral of a stellar-mass black hole into a supermassive black hole. We construct a phenomenological angular momentum transport equation that reproduces known disk effects. Disk torques modify the gravitational wave phase evolution to det...

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Bibliographic Details
Main Authors: Yunes, Nicolas, Kocsis, Bence, Loeb, Abraham, Haiman, Zoltan
Other Authors: Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Department of Physics
Format: Article
Language:en_US
Published: American Physical Society (APS) 2012
Online Access:http://hdl.handle.net/1721.1/69068
Description
Summary:We study the effects of a thin gaseous accretion disk on the inspiral of a stellar-mass black hole into a supermassive black hole. We construct a phenomenological angular momentum transport equation that reproduces known disk effects. Disk torques modify the gravitational wave phase evolution to detectable levels with LISA for reasonable disk parameters. The Fourier transform of disk-modified waveforms acquires a correction with a different frequency trend than post-Newtonian vacuum terms. Such inspirals could be used to detect accretion disks with LISA and to probe their physical parameters.