Accurate modeling of intermediate-mass-ratio inspirals: Exploring the form of the self-force in the intermediate-mass-ratio regime

TL;DR

This paper develops an accurate waveform model for intermediate-mass-ratio inspirals, illuminating the self-force's form across different mass-ratio regimes by combining self-force results and EOB predictions.

Contribution

It introduces a waveform model that accurately captures the dynamics of intermediate-mass-ratio inspirals and proposes a unified prescription for the orbital frequency shift across regimes.

Findings

The model reproduces the dynamical evolution predicted by the EOB approach.

A new prescription for the ISCO frequency shift is proposed.

The approach bridges the gap between extreme and comparable mass-ratio regimes.

Abstract

In this paper we develop a waveform model that accurately reproduces the dynamical evolution of intermediate-mass-ratio inspirals, as predicted by the effective-one-body (EOB) model introduced in [1], and which enables us to shed some light on the form of the self-force for events with mass-ratio 1:6, 1:10 and 1:100. To complement this study, we make use of self-force results in the extreme-mass-ratio regime, and of predictions of the EOB model introduced in [1], to derive a prescription for the shift of the orbital frequency at the innermost stable circular orbit which consistently captures predictions from the extreme, intermediate and comparable mass-ratio regimes.