Approximate Waveforms for Extreme-Mass-Ratio Inspirals in Modified Gravity Spacetimes

TL;DR

This paper develops approximate gravitational waveforms for extreme-mass-ratio inspirals in modified gravity spacetimes, enabling model-independent tests of General Relativity with future space-based detectors.

Contribution

It introduces analytic-kludge waveforms incorporating parameterized deformations of Kerr spacetime, capturing key features of inspirals in modified gravity scenarios.

Findings

Waveforms include orbital eccentricity and relativistic precession.

Deformations modeled using a modified gravity bumpy metric.

Framework allows for testing deviations from Kerr in gravitational wave data.

Abstract

Extreme-mass-ratio inspirals, in which a stellar-mass compact object spirals into a supermassive black hole, are prime candidates for detection with space-borne milliHertz gravitational wave detectors, similar to the Laser Interferometer Space Antenna. The gravitational waves generated during such inspirals encode information about the background in which the small object is moving, providing a tracer of the spacetime geometry and a probe of strong-field physics. In this paper, we construct approximate, "analytic-kludge" waveforms for such inspirals with parameterized post-Einsteinian corrections that allow for generic, model-independent deformations of the supermassive black hole background away from the Kerr metric. These approximate waveforms include all of the qualitative features of true waveforms for generic inspirals, including orbital eccentricity and relativistic precession. The deformations of the Kerr metric are modeled using a recently proposed, modified gravity bumpy metric, which parametrically deforms the Kerr spacetime while ensuring that three approximate constants of the motion remain for geodesic orbits: a conserved energy, azimuthal angular momentum and Carter constant. The deformations represent modified gravity effects and have been analytically mapped to several modified gravity black hole solutions in four dimensions. In the analytic kludge waveforms, the conservative motion is modeled by a post-Newtonian expansion of the geodesic equations in the deformed spacetimes, which in turn induce modifications to the radiation-reaction force. These analytic-kludge waveforms serve as a first step toward complete and model-independent tests of General Relativity with extreme mass-ratio inspirals.