Hamiltonians and canonical coordinates for spinning particles in curved space-time

TL;DR

This paper develops Hamiltonian formalism and canonical coordinates for spinning particles in curved spacetime, aiding the modeling of gravitational waves from extreme-mass-ratio inspirals for LISA detection.

Contribution

It introduces Hamiltonians and canonical phase-space coordinates for various spin conditions, facilitating symplectic integration of spinning bodies in curved spacetime.

Findings

Motion is regular for typical EMRI spin ranges

Larger spins lead to weakly chaotic dynamics

Canonical coordinates improve numerical integration

Abstract

The spin-curvature coupling as captured by the so-called Mathisson-Papapetrou-Dixon (MPD) equations is the leading order effect of the finite size of a rapidly rotating compact astrophysical object moving in a curved background. It is also a next-to-leading order effect in the phase of gravitational waves emitted by extreme-mass-ratio inspirals (EMRIs), which are expected to become observable by the LISA space mission. Additionally, exploring the Hamiltonian formalism for spinning bodies is important for the construction of the so-called Effective-One-Body waveform models that should eventually cover all mass ratios. The MPD equations require supplementary conditions determining the frame in which the moments of the body are computed. We review various choices of these supplementary spin conditions and their properties. Then, we give Hamiltonians either in proper-time or coordinate-time parametrization for the Tulczyjew-Dixon, Mathisson-Pirani, and Kyrian-Semer\'ak conditions. Finally, we also give canonical phase-space coordinates parametrizing the spin tensor. We demonstrate the usefulness of the canonical coordinates for symplectic integration by constructing Poincar\'e surfaces of section for spinning bodies moving in the equatorial plane in Schwarzschild space-time. We observe the motion to be essentially regular for EMRI-ranges of the spin, but for larger values the Poincar\'e surfaces of section exhibit the typical structure of a weakly chaotic system. A possible future application of the numerical integration method is the inclusion of spin effects in EMRIs at the precision requirements of LISA.