Radiation Backreaction in Spinning Binaries

Abstract

The evolution under radiation backreaction of a binary system consisting of a black hole and a companion is studied in the limiting case when the spin of the companion is negligible compared with the spin S of the black hole. To first order in the spin, the motion of the reduced-mass particle excluding radiation effects, is characterized by three constants: the energy E, the magnitude L of the angular momentum and the projection L_S of the angular momentum along the spin S. This motion is quasiperiodic with a period determined by r_{min} and r_{max}. We introduce a new parametrization, making the integration over a period of a generic orbit especially simple. We give the averaged losses in terms of the 'constants of motion' during one period for generic orbits, to linear order in spin.