Dark matter minispike: a significant enhancement of eccentricity for intermediate-mass-ratio-inspirals

Understand

When a stellar massive compact object, such as a black hole (BH), inspirals into an intermediate massive black hole (IMBH), an intermediate-mass-ratio-inspiral (IMRI) system forms.

• Such kind of systems are important sources for space-based gravitational wave detectors including LISA, Taiji and Tianqin.
• Dark matter (DM) minispikes may form around IMBHs.
• We study the effect of dynamical friction against DM minispike on the evolution of eccentric IMRI.