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The unique potential of extreme mass-ratio inspirals for gravitational-wave astronomy

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arxiv 1903.03686 v1 pith:553LHLMO submitted 2019-03-08 astro-ph.HE gr-qc

The unique potential of extreme mass-ratio inspirals for gravitational-wave astronomy

classification astro-ph.HE gr-qc
keywords blackmassiveholeemriswilldataenablegravitational-wave
verification ladder T0 review T1 audit T2 compute T3 formal T4 reserved
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The inspiral of a stellar-mass compact object into a massive ($\sim 10^{4}$-$10^{7} M_{\odot}$) black hole produces an intricate gravitational-wave signal. Due to the extreme-mass ratios involved, these systems complete $\sim 10^{4}$-$10^{5}$ orbits, most of them in the strong-field region of the massive black hole, emitting in the frequency range $\sim10^{-4}-1~$Hz. This makes them prime sources for the space-based observatory LISA (Laser Interferometer Space Antenna). LISA observations will enable high-precision measurements of the physical characteristics of these extreme-mass-ratio inspirals (EMRIs): redshifted masses, massive black hole spin and orbital eccentricity can be determined with fractional errors $\sim 10^{-4}$-$10^{-6}$, the luminosity distance with better than $\sim 10\%$ precision, and the sky localization to within a few square degrees. EMRIs will provide valuable information about stellar dynamics in galactic nuclei, as well as precise data about massive black hole populations, including the distribution of masses and spins. They will enable percent-level measurements of the multipolar structure of massive black holes, precisely testing the strong-gravity properties of their spacetimes. EMRIs may also provide cosmographical data regarding the expansion of the Universe if inferred source locations can be correlated with galaxy catalogs.

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Cited by 15 Pith papers

Reviewed papers in the Pith corpus that reference this work. Sorted by Pith novelty score.

  1. First-time assessment of glitch-induced bias and uncertainty in inference of extreme mass ratio inspirals

    gr-qc 2025-12 accept novelty 7.0

    Moderately mitigated glitch streams induce negligible to minor biases (0.04–0.6σ) in EMRI parameters while weakly mitigated streams with higher-SNR events can reach ~1σ biases, making EMRI inference more robust than f...

  2. Probing Quadratically Coupled Ultralight Dark Matter with the Laser Interferometer Space Antenna

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    LISA forecasts for quadratically coupled ultralight dark matter show competitive or superior sensitivity to terrestrial and astrophysical probes in selected mass windows, free of screening.

  3. Self-force calculations with numerical relativity methods

    gr-qc 2026-06 unverdicted novelty 6.0

    A new numerical relativity-inspired method achieves exponential convergence for scalar self-force calculations in Kerr spacetime on circular equatorial orbits up to near-extremal spins and the ISCO.

  4. Recoil-regulated extreme mass-ratio inspirals in AGN disks

    astro-ph.HE 2026-05 unverdicted novelty 6.0

    Recoil kicks and binary interactions in AGN disks suppress EMRI formation except in young systems, predicting LISA rates of 1-30 per year dominated by low-mass AGNs.

  5. Efficient and Stable Computation of Gravitational-Wave Fluxes from Generic Kerr Orbits via a Unified HeunC Framework

    gr-qc 2026-05 unverdicted novelty 6.0

    A unified confluent HeunC framework computes gravitational-wave fluxes from generic Kerr orbits with 10^{-11} relative errors and speedups of 3-60x over existing packages for low- and high-order modes.

  6. Efficient and Stable Computation of Gravitational-Wave Fluxes from Generic Kerr Orbits via a Unified HeunC Framework

    gr-qc 2026-05 unverdicted novelty 6.0

    A HeunC framework computes gravitational-wave fluxes from generic Kerr orbits with 10^{-11} relative errors and speedups of 3-60x over prior packages by eliminating auxiliary parameters via analytic continuation and a...

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    gr-qc 2026-05 unverdicted novelty 6.0

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  8. Relativistic signatures of scalar dark matter in extreme-mass-ratio inspirals

    gr-qc 2026-04 unverdicted novelty 6.0

    Relativistic metric backreaction from scalar dark matter clouds in EMRIs produces dominant polar gravitational wave corrections for Mμ ≲ 0.12, exceeding axial and scalar radiation channels at small separations.

  9. Hawking area law in quantum gravity

    gr-qc 2026-04 unverdicted novelty 5.0

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  10. Probing Kerr Symmetry Breaking with LISA Extreme-Mass-Ratio Inspirals

    gr-qc 2026-04 unverdicted novelty 5.0

    LISA EMRIs can constrain deviations from Kerr equatorial symmetry to 10^{-2} and axial symmetry to 10^{-3} using Analytic Kludge waveforms and Fisher analysis.

  11. Are Black Holes Fuzzballs? Probing Horizon-Scale Structure with LISA

    hep-th 2026-04 unverdicted novelty 5.0

    LISA can constrain non-axisymmetric mass quadrupole deformations at the 10^{-3} level and axisymmetric mass octupole deformations at the 10^{-2} level in EMRI signals to test fuzzball proposals.

  12. Constraints on the extreme mass-ratio inspiral population from LISA data

    gr-qc 2025-08 unverdicted novelty 5.0

    A neural-network-accelerated hierarchical Bayesian pipeline is developed and validated on a phenomenological model to constrain EMRI population parameters from LISA data.

  13. A multi-parameter expansion for the evolution of asymmetric binaries in astrophysical environments

    gr-qc 2025-07 unverdicted novelty 5.0

    A multi-parameter formalism is developed to describe asymmetric binaries in general matter distributions by perturbing around Schwarzschild and reducing metric and fluid perturbations to wave equations similar to the ...

  14. Environmental effects vs. modified gravity in the LISA massive black hole binary population

    gr-qc 2026-07 unverdicted novelty 4.0

    Population-level hierarchical analysis shows environmental effects from circumbinary disks are unlikely to bias LISA tests of general relativity for massive black hole binaries in realistic scenarios.

  15. Probing Active Galactic Nuclei and Measuring the Hubble constant with Extreme-Mass-Ratio Inspirals

    gr-qc 2026-04 unverdicted novelty 4.0

    Modeling accretion disk interactions with EMRIs allows reliable environment identification and boosts dark-siren Hubble constant precision by as much as 20% for individual events.