Probing beyond-vacuum general relativistic effects with extreme mass-ratio inspirals

TL;DR

This paper investigates how extreme mass-ratio inspirals (EMRIs) can be used to detect beyond-vacuum effects in general relativity, including environmental influences and scalar Gauss-Bonnet gravity, by analyzing waveform modifications and parameter estimation.

Contribution

It provides a comprehensive framework for modeling EMRIs in beyond-vacuum scenarios, incorporating environmental and modified gravity effects into waveform predictions and parameter estimation.

Findings

Dark matter and scalar field effects cause measurable waveform dephasing.

Both environmental and modified gravity effects can be disentangled with future detectors.

Beyond-vacuum modeling is crucial for accurate tests of gravity.

Abstract

We examine extreme mass-ratio inspirals (EMRIs) as probes of beyond-vacuum general relativistic effects, accounting for both astrophysical environments and scalar Gauss-Bonnet (sGB) gravity. In beyond-vacuum scenarios, the evolution of an EMRI immersed in a cold dark matter environment modifies the gravitational wave flux and introduces additional dissipative effects such as dynamical friction. In parallel, in the beyond-general relativistic settings such as in sGB gravity, the inspiraling object carries an effective scalar charge and emits scalar radiation. Both environmental and modified-gravity effects modify the flux-balance law, thereby inducing changes in the EMRI dynamics. Using a two-timescale analysis within the fixed-frequency formalism, we compute leading-order corrections to the energy fluxes for quasi-circular, equatorial orbits in static, spherically symmetric spacetimes and construct the corresponding gravitational waveforms, which are used to quantify the accumulated gravitational wave dephasing and waveform mismatch relative to the vacuum general relativistic case. We further perform the Fisher Information Matrix analysis to estimate parameter correlations and the ability of future space-based detectors such as the Laser Interferometer Space Antenna (LISA) to disentangle environmental and modified gravity effects. Our results show that both dark matter and scalar field effects can leave measurable imprints on EMRI waveforms and that a consistent beyond-vacuum treatment is essential for robust tests of gravity.