Gravitational-wave glitches in chaotic extreme-mass-ratio inspirals

Understand

The Kerr geometry admits the Carter symmetry, which ensures that the geodesic equations are integrable.

• It is shown that gravitational waveforms associated with extreme-mass-ratio inspirals involving a non-integrable compact object display `glitch' phenomena, where the frequencies of gravitational waves increase abruptly, when the orbit crosses certain spacetime regions known as Birkhoff islands.
• The presence or absence of these features in data from upcoming space-borne detectors will therefore allow not only for tests of general relativity, but also of fundamental spacetime symmetries.