Reconstruction of the Weyl-Lewis-Papapetrou metric for stationary and axially symmetric gravitational perturbations of a Kerr black hole

Abstract

The study of black hole perturbations typically follows two main approaches: the direct perturbation of the metric, or the perturbation within the Newman-Penrose (NP) or Geroch-Held-Penrose (GHP) formalism. In the latter case, a reconstruction procedure, such as the Chrzanowski-Cohen-Kegeles (CCK) method based on the Debye (Hertz) potential, is required to obtain the corresponding metric perturbation. However, the reconstructed metric is then expressed in the radiation gauge, which is not always optimal. In this paper, we analyze stationary and axially symmetric perturbations of the Kerr black hole within both frameworks. Focusing on the vacuum part of the spacetime (outside the sources), we derive an explicit gauge transformation between the averaged radiation gauge and the gauge in which the metric takes its standard Weyl-Lewis-Papapetrou (WLP) form, and we express the linearized WLP metric functions directly in terms of the Debye potential. We further discuss perturbations of the Kerr black hole towards general type D spacetimes, and analyze the mass and angular momentum perturbations in more detail. Finally, we illustrate the procedure on two examples beyond the type D class: a perturbation of the Schwarzschild black hole by a thin disk, and a perturbation of the Kerr black hole by a rotating particle.