The transition from adiabatic inspiral to geodesic plunge for a compact object around a massive Kerr black hole: Generic orbits

TL;DR

This paper extends the understanding of the transition from inspiral to plunge for a compact object around a Kerr black hole by generalizing previous methods to include inclined and eccentric orbits, enhancing modeling accuracy.

Contribution

It generalizes the Ori and Thorne transition trajectory method to cover inclined and eccentric orbits around Kerr black holes.

Findings

Extended the transition method to generic orbits.

Provided a framework for more accurate gravitational wave modeling.

Enhanced understanding of inspiral-to-plunge dynamics.

Abstract

The inspiral of a stellar mass compact object falling into a massive Kerr black hole can be broken into three different regimes: An adiabatic inspiral phase, where the inspiral timescale is much larger than the orbital period; a late-time radial infall, which can be approximated as a plunging geodesic; and a regime where the body transitions from the inspiral to plunge. In earlier work, Ori and Thorne have outlined a method to compute the trajectory during this transition for a compact object in a circular, equatorial orbit. We generalize this technique to include inclination and eccentricity.