Extreme mass ratio inspirals into black holes surrounded by matter

Understand

Inspirals of stellar-mass compact objects into massive black holes, known as extreme mass ratio inspirals (EMRIs), are one of the key targets for upcoming space-based gravitational-wave detectors.

• In this paper we take the first steps needed to systematically incorporate the effect of external gravitating matter on EMRIs.
• We model the inspiral as taking place in the field of a Schwarzschild black hole perturbed by the gravitational field of a far axisymmetric distribution of mass enclosing the system.
• We take into account the redshift, frame-dragging, and quadrupolar tide caused by the enclosing matter, thus incorporating all effects to inverse third order of the characteristic distance of the enclosing mass.