Generic effective sources for first-order in mass-ratio gravitational self-force calculations in Schwarzschild spacetime

Abstract

The numerical calculation of gravitational self-force in extreme mass ratio inspiral systems is fundamentally challenging due to the singular nature of point-particle sources. To overcome these difficulties, the effective source method offers an innovative alternative by replacing traditional regularization techniques with a reformulation of the problem. In this paper, we present the first fully analytic framework for constructing effective sources to compute the gravitational self-force for generic orbits in Schwarzschild spacetime. By reformulating the singular field through angular modulation in terms of a tetrad decomposition, the effective source can be constructed with the linear combination of scalar modes. The derived effective source is continuous across the particle's worldline, enabling efficient numerical implementation in $1+1$ dimensions.