Gravitational waves from extreme-mass-ratio systems in astrophysical environments

We establish a generic, fully relativistic formalism to study gravitational-wave emission by extreme-mass-ratio systems in spherically symmetric, nonvacuum black hole spacetimes. The potential applications to astrophysical setups range from black holes accreting baryonic matter to those within axionic clouds and dark matter environments, allowing one to assess the impact of the galactic potential, of accretion, gravitational drag, and halo feedback on the generation and propagation of gravitational waves. We apply our methods to a black hole within a halo of matter. We find fluid modes imparted to the gravitational-wave signal (a clear evidence of the black hole fundamental mode instability) and the tantalizing possibility to infer galactic properties from gravitational-wave measurements by sensitive, low-frequency detectors.

10.1103/PhysRevLett.129.241103

1079-7114

Cardoso, Vitor

08c1bdef-b56a-4067-ab37-89a9ece74fb7

Destounis, Kyriakos

419d13e5-3105-4092-9bb8-36014d4b574d

Duque, Francisco

60a077b7-ba4b-4314-855b-43ed6668e185

Macedo, Rodrigo Panosso

8f176eb4-ca20-492b-a41e-e78d47d6fefe

Maselli, Andrea

b41341b2-e44d-41be-a63e-7f0f6c9cc743

9 December 2022

Cardoso, Vitor

08c1bdef-b56a-4067-ab37-89a9ece74fb7

Destounis, Kyriakos

419d13e5-3105-4092-9bb8-36014d4b574d

Duque, Francisco

60a077b7-ba4b-4314-855b-43ed6668e185

Macedo, Rodrigo Panosso

8f176eb4-ca20-492b-a41e-e78d47d6fefe

Maselli, Andrea

b41341b2-e44d-41be-a63e-7f0f6c9cc743

Cardoso, Vitor, Destounis, Kyriakos, Duque, Francisco, Macedo, Rodrigo Panosso and Maselli, Andrea (2022) Gravitational waves from extreme-mass-ratio systems in astrophysical environments. Physical Review Letters, 129 (24), [241103]. (doi:10.1103/PhysRevLett.129.241103).

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2210.01133 - Accepted Manuscript

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Accepted/In Press date: 21 November 2022

Published date: 9 December 2022

Additional Information: Funding Information: We thank all the participants of the “EuCAPT Workshop: Gravitational wave probes of black hole environments” in Rome, David Hilditch, and Rodrigo Vicente for useful and lively discussions. V. C. is a Villum Investigator and a DNRF Chair, supported by VILLUM FONDEN (Grant No. 37766) and by the Danish Research Foundation. V. C. acknowledges financial support provided under the European Union’s H2020 ERC Advanced Grant “Black holes: gravitational engines of discovery” Grant Agreement No. Gravitas–101052587. F. D. acknowledges financial support provided by FCT/Portugal through Grant No. SFRH/BD/143657/2019. R. P. M. acknowledges financial support provided from STFC via Grant No. ST/V000551/1. K. D. acknowledges financial support provided under the European Union’s H2020 ERC, Starting Grant Agreement No. DarkGRA–757480. K. D. also acknowledges support under the MIUR PRIN and FARE programmes (GW-NEXT, CUP: B84I20000100001), and from the Amaldi Research Center funded by the MIUR program “Dipartimento di Eccellenza” (CUP: B81I18001170001). This project has received funding from the European Union’s Horizon 2020 research and innovation programme under the Marie Sklodowska-Curie Grant Agreement No. 101007855. We thank FCT for financial support through Projects No. UIDB/00099/2020 and No. UIDB/04459/2020. We acknowledge financial support provided by FCT/Portugal through Grants No. 2022.01324.PTDC, No. PTDC/FIS-AST/7002/2020, No. UIDB/00099/2020, and No. UIDB/04459/2020. We acknowledge financial support provided by FCT/Portugal through Grants No. PTDC/MAT-APL/30043/2017 and No. PTDC/FIS-AST/7002/2020. Publisher Copyright: © 2022 American Physical Society.