Gravitational radiation from Kerr black holes using the Sasaki-Nakamura formalism: Waveforms and fluxes at infinity
Phys. Rev. D 113, 124007 – Published 2 June, 2026
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1103/9ngz-k1lr
Abstract
In linear perturbation theory for Kerr black holes, there are two equivalent formalisms, namely, the Teukolsky and the Sasaki-Nakamura (SN) formalism. Typically, one defaults to the Teukolsky formalism, especially when calculating extreme mass ratio inspiral waveforms, and uses the SN formalism when dealing with extended sources, as it offers superior convergence when employing the Green’s function method for calculating the inhomogeneous solution. In this work, we present a new scheme for solving the inhomogeneous SN equation, based on integration by parts, that eliminates the extra radial integration step required in the standard formulation to construct the source term for convolution with the SN variable. We derive also a SN source term that is valid for point particles on arbitrary motions around Kerr black holes. Our approach enables efficient computations of gravitational waveforms within the SN formalism in all cases, from compact to extended sources. We validate our scheme and code implementation against the literature and find excellent agreement, achieving comparable performance without employing any special optimization techniques.
