GJC: Nicholas Loutrel "Post-Newtonian Spin Precession in the Extreme Mass Ratio Limit"

Wednesday 29 May 2024, 13:00 → 14:00 Europe/Rome

Sala Cortini (Fermi)

One of the prime targets of the LISA mission are extreme mass ratio inspirals (EMRIs), comprising a small black hole inspiraling into a supermassive black hole. The primary goal of the self-force formalism is to construct accurate waveform models necessary, not only for detection, but also to infer the physical parameters of the EMRI. Currently, the most accurate self-force waveforms struggle to extract the parameters describing the spin of the secondary black hole, owing to degeneracies introduced by an assumption of spin-alignment. However, similar degeneracies appear for equal mass binaries in the post-Newtonian (PN) formalism, where it is known that such degeneracies are broken when considering spin precession dynamics and its effect on the waveform. While the complexity of self-force calculations currently prevents studies of EMRIs with precessing secondaries, one can estimate the impact of precession on waveform models and parameter estimation by studying PN precession dynamics within the EMRI limit. Here, I will discuss recent work utilizing PN spin precession as a proxy for understanding waveform systematics in EMRIs. I will show how the PN precession equations can be solved using multiple scale analysis, and discuss some basic predictions we can expect from upcoming parameter estimation studies using spin precessing PN waveforms for EMRIs.