Black holes in galaxies: environmental impact on gravitational-wave generation and propagation

Abstract

We introduce a family of solutions of Einstein's gravity minimally coupled to an anisotropic fluid, describing asymptotically flat black holes with "hair" and a regular horizon. These spacetimes can describe the geometry of galaxies harboring supermassive black holes, and are extensions of Einstein clusters to include horizons. They are useful to constrain the environment surrounding astrophysical black holes, using electromagnetic or gravitational-wave observations. We compute the main properties of the geometry, including the corrections to the ringdown stage induced by the external matter and fluxes by orbiting particles. The leading order effect to these corrections is a gravitational-redshift, but gravitational-wave propagation is affected by the galactic potential in a nontrivial way, and may be characterized with future observatories.