Dyson, C. orcid.org/0000-0002-9742-9422, Spieksma, T.F.M. orcid.org/0000-0003-0513-5580, Brito, R. orcid.org/0000-0002-7807-3053 et al. (2 more authors) (2025) Environmental effects in extreme-mass-ratio inspirals: perturbations to the environment in Kerr spacetimes. Physical Review Letters, 134 (21). 211403. ISSN 0031-9007
Abstract
Future gravitational wave observatories open a unique avenue to study the environments surrounding black holes. Intermediate or extreme mass ratio inspirals will spend thousands to millions of cycles in the sensitivity range of detectors, allowing subtle environmental effects to accumulate in the gravitational waveform. Working in Lorenz gauge and considering equatorial circular orbits, we present the first self-consistent, fully relativistic calculation of a perturbation to a black hole environment due to an inspiraling secondary in the Kerr geometry. As an example case, we consider the environment to be that of a superradiantly grown scalar cloud, though our framework is generalizable to other scenarios. We demonstrate that the scalar field develops a rich wake structure induced by the secondary and compute scalar fluxes emitted to infinity and through the horizon. Relative differences in the fluxes compared to Schwarzschild are tens of percent on large intervals of parameter space, underscoring the importance of modeling in Kerr.
Metadata
Item Type: | Article |
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Authors/Creators: |
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Copyright, Publisher and Additional Information: | © 2025 The Authors. Except as otherwise noted, this author-accepted version of a journal article published in Physical Review Letters is made available via the University of Sheffield Research Publications and Copyright Policy under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License (CC-BY 4.0), which permits unrestricted use, distribution and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited. To view a copy of this licence, visit http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/ |
Keywords: | Classical black holes; Classical solutions in field theory; Extensions of scalar sector; General relativity; Gravitational waves; Phenomenology |
Dates: |
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Institution: | The University of Sheffield |
Academic Units: | The University of Sheffield > Faculty of Science (Sheffield) > School of Mathematical and Physical Sciences |
Depositing User: | Symplectic Sheffield |
Date Deposited: | 03 Jun 2025 15:53 |
Last Modified: | 04 Jun 2025 12:10 |
Status: | Published |
Publisher: | American Physical Society (APS) |
Refereed: | Yes |
Identification Number: | 10.1103/physrevlett.134.211403 |
Related URLs: | |
Open Archives Initiative ID (OAI ID): | oai:eprints.whiterose.ac.uk:227286 |