Dissipation in extreme mass-ratio binaries with a spinning secondary
Sarp Akçay, Sam R. Dolan, Chris Kavanagh, Jordan Moxon, Niels Warburton, Barry Wardell
Abstract
We present the gravitational-wave flux balance law in an extreme mass-ratio binary with a spinning secondary. This law relates the flux of energy (angular momentum) radiated to null infinity and through the event horizon to the local change in the secondary's orbital energy (angular momentum) for generic, nonresonant bound orbits in Kerr spacetime. As an explicit example we compute these quantities for a spin-aligned body moving on a circular orbit around a Schwarzschild black hole. We perform this calculation both analytically, via a high-order post-Newtonian expansion, and numerically in two different gauges. Using these results we demonstrate explicitly that our new balance law holds.