SPEAKER: Seth Hopper (University College Dublin and University of North Carolina)
ABSTRACT: Small compact objects orbiting supermassive back holes are an important potential source of gravitational radiation. Detection of such waves and the parameter estimation of their sources will require accurate waveform templates. To this eventual end, I present work on bound eccentric motion around a static black hole. In two separate approaches, I examine solutions to the first order (in mass-ratio) field equations. First, I consider solving the field equations entirely analytically in a double post-Newtonian/small-eccentricity expansion. Then I show numeric work wherein we use the MST formalism to solve the field equations to 200 digits. We use this extreme accuracy to fit for previously unknown PN energy flux parameters, extending the previous state of the art from 3PN to 7PN.