Extreme mass-ratio inspiral of a spinning body into a Kerr black hole I: Evolution along generic trajectories

Understand

The study of spinning bodies moving in curved spacetime has relevance to binary black hole systems with large mass ratios, as well as being of formal interest.

• At zeroth order in a binary's mass ratio, the smaller body moves on a geodesic of the larger body's spacetime.
• Post-geodesic corrections describing forces driving the small body's worldline away from geodesics must be incorporated to model the system accurately.
• An important post-geodesic effect is the gravitational self-force, which describes the small body's interaction with its own spacetime curvature.