Impact of the second order self-forces on the dephasing of the gravitational waves from quasi-circular extreme mass-ratio inspirals

Understand

The accurate calculation of long-term phase evolution of gravitational wave (GW) forms from extreme (intermediate) mass ratio inspirals (E(I)MRIs) is an inevitable step to extract information from this system.

• Achieving this goal, it is believed that we need to understand the gravitational self-forces.
• However, it is not quntatively demonstrated that the second order self-forces are necessary for this purpose.
• In this paper we revisit the problem to estimate the order of magnitude of the dephasing caused by the second order self-forces on a small body in a quasi-circular orbit around a Kerr black hole, based on the knowledge of the post-Newtonian (PN) approximation and invoking the energy balance argument.