Evolving extreme mass-ratio inspirals in a perturbed Schwarzschild spacetime
Phys. Rev. D 113, 024069 – Published 30 January, 2026
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1103/dy1z-36w5
Abstract
In this work, we develop the modified Teukolsky formalism that describes the gravitational wave (GW) radiation from a point mass orbiting around a perturbed Schwarzschild black hole. This perturbation of the background spacetime induces a secular change in the orbital phase of the point mass. In turn, this causes a modification in the GW flux, which can be used to probe the background spacetime. We explicitly apply this formalism to a bumpy Schwarzschild spacetime as a proof of principle. The results pave the way for the description of extreme mass-ratio inspirals in generic perturbed Kerr spacetime in future developments.
