Geodesic deviations: modeling extreme mass-ratio systems and their gravitational waves

Abstract

The method of geodesic deviations has been applied to derive accurate analytic approximations to geodesics in Schwarzschild space-time. The results are used to construct analytic expressions for the source terms in the Regge-Wheeler and Zerilli-Moncrief equations, which describe the propagation of gravitational waves emitted by a compact massive object moving in the Schwarzschild background space-time. The wave equations are solved numerically to provide the asymptotic form of the wave at large distances for a series of non-circular bound orbits with periastron distances up to the ISCO radius, and the power emitted in gravitational waves by the extreme-mass ratio binary system is computed. The results compare well with those of purely numerical approaches.