Whirling orbits around twirling black holes from conformal symmetry

Abstract

Dynamics in the throat of rapidly rotating Kerr black holes is governed by an emergent near-horizon conformal symmetry. The throat contains unstable circular orbits at radii extending from the ISCO down to the light ring. We show that they are related by conformal transformations to physical plunges and osculating trajectories. These orbits have angular momentum arbitrarily higher than that of ISCO. Using the conformal symmetry we compute analytically the radiation produced by the physical orbits. We also present a simple formula for the full self-force on such trajectories in terms of the self-force on circular orbits.