Assessment of Effective-One-Body Radiation Reactions for Generic Planar Orbits

TL;DR

This paper evaluates different analytical models for EOB radiation reaction in generic planar orbits by comparing them to exact numerical results, identifying the most accurate prescription, and proposing an improved model valid for any mass ratio.

Contribution

It systematically compares EOB radiation reaction prescriptions against numerical results and introduces an improved, more accurate model incorporating noncircular 2PN corrections.

Findings

NCN prescription is most accurate for eccentric and hyperbolic orbits.

Direct flux comparison is more stringent than waveform unfaithfulness.

Proposed NCN2PN model is valid for any mass ratio and improves accuracy.

Abstract

In this paper we assess the performances of different analytical prescriptions for the effective-one-body (EOB) radiation reaction along generic planar orbits using exact numerical result in the test-mass limit. We consider three prescriptions put forward in the recent literature: (i) the quasicircular prescription (QC), (ii) the QC with second post-Newtonian (2PN) order noncircular corrections (QC2PN), and (iii) the QC corrected by the noncircular Newtonian prefactor (NCN). The analytical fluxes are then compared against the exact fluxes that are computed by solving the Teukolsky equation with a test-mass source in geodesic motion. We find that the NCN prescription is the most accurate for both eccentric and hyperbolic orbits and it is in robust agreement also for large values of the eccentricity. This result carries over to the comparable masses, as we discuss for a numerical-relativity (NR) case study. We also demonstrate that, while the EOB/NR waveform unfaithfulness is a necessary check for the precision of EOB models, the direct comparison of EOB/NR fluxes is a more stringent and informative test to select the best prescription. Finally, we propose an improved radiation reaction, NCN2PN, that includes noncircular 2PN corrections, in resummed form, as a further multiplicative contribution and that is valid for any mass ratio.