Adiabatic Evolution of three 'Constants' of Motion for Greatly Inclined Orbits in Kerr spacetime

Abstract

General orbits of a particle of small mass $\mu$ around a Kerr black hole of mass $M$ are characterized by three parameters: the energy, the angular momentum and the Carter constant. The time-averaged rates of change of the energy and the angular momentum can be obtained by computing the corresponding fluxes of gravitational waves emitted by the particle. By contrast, the time-averaged rate of change of the Carter constant cannot be expressed as a flux of gravitational waves. Recently a method to compute this rate of change was proposed by Mino, and we refined it into a simplified form. In this paper we further extend our previous work to give a new formulation without the aid of expansion in terms of a small inclination angle.