Speaker: Chris Kavanagh (IHES, Paris)
Abstract:
The space based gravitational wave observatory LISA aims to study a diverse range of low frequency gravitational wave sources. One system of such interest is extreme mass ratio binaries, where one has a galactic centre type massive black hole with a smaller compact body in a highly relativistic inspiralling orbit. The gravitational self-force approach models these binaries as a point particle sourcing a perturbation to a black hole spacetime. The perturbation influences the point particles trajectory accelerating it off a geodesic, this effect is called the self-force. In this talk I will overview some of the main techniques in this perturbative approach to the two body problem, and present some of the advances made in recent years to using purely analytic methods to calculate high order asymptotic expansions of gauge-invariant physical effects of the self-force.