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Since the advent of (relativistic) astrophysics it has been one of the most important tasks to study the motion of freely falling particles, both from a purely academic and an observational point of view. In this presentation I review the solution methods for the equations of motion of particle-like objects and light within a wide variety of spacetimes. Moreover, we take a closer look on the importance of special orbits for phenomena like black hole shadows or accretion discs.

"""Gravitational wave detectors and their increasing precision have enabled more specific tests of general relativity, including spectroscopic tests of black holes by measuring the quasinormal modes within the ringdown signal. These tests ideally compare the QNM frequencies to predictions from theories beyond GR, where black holes may be described by deformations to the Kerr metric. I will present a framework to compute the first order QNM shifts of these deformed Kerr Black Holes at arbitrary spin and present some initial results for the spin-0 case. In addition, I will lay out some of the technical issues that come up when computing the shifts for the spin-2 modes, and explain how they are surmountable."""

We study the stability of quasi-normal modes (QNM) in asymptotically flat black hole spacetimes by means of a pseudospectrum analysis. The construction of the Schwarzschild QNM pseudospectrum reveals: i) the stability of the slowest decaying QNM under perturbations respecting the asymptotic structure, reassessing the instability of the fundamental QNM discussed by Nollert (1996); ii) the instability of all overtones under small scale perturbations of sufficiently high frequency, that migrate to a universal class of QNM branches along pseudospectra boundaries, shedding light on Nollert & Price's analysis (1996).

In this talk we discuss current efforts to calculate the gravitational Green function and use it to calculate the self-force in Schwarzschild spacetime. We first calculate the Green function for the Regge-Wheeler equation. Then, using the Chandrasekhar transformation we are able to calculate the Green function for the spin-2 (radial) Teukolsky equation. By following the Chrzanowsky metric reconstruction procedure, we intent to obtain the Green function associated with the metric perturbation equation and, subsequently, the self-force.

We present an update on Green function methods for modelling Extreme Mass Ratio Inspirals. In particular, we present an accurate, efficient and robust procedure for computing the Green functions of the Regge-Wheeler and Zerilli equations, and show the application to the computation of self-force and energy flux results, considering a range of sample orbits from circular geodesics to unbound encounters. In addition, we demonstrate further possible applications and improvements to the method, including progress in extending it beyond the Regge-Wheeler-Zerilli formalism.

We describe the transition to plunge of a point particle around the last stable orbit of Kerr at leading order in the transition-timescale expansion. Taking systematically into account all self-force effects, we prove that the transition motion is still described by the Painlevé transcendent equation of the first kind. Using an asymptotically matched expansions scheme, we consistently match the quasi-circular adiabatic inspiral with the transition motion. The matching requires to take into account the secular change of angular velocity due to radiation-reaction during the adiabatic inspiral, which consistently leads to a leading-order radial self-force in the slow timescale expansion.

The motion of a radiating point particle in the Kerr spacetime can be represented by a series of geodesics whose constants of motion change slowly over its motion. In the case of energy and axial angular momentum, there are conserved currents, defined for the field, whose fluxes at infinity and the horizon directly determine the evolution of these constants of motion. This relationship between the properties of point-particle motion and fluxes of conserved currents is known as a "flux-balance law". Despite the flux-balance laws for energy and axial angular momentum, the third constant of motion in Kerr, the Carter constant, has no known flux-balance law. While there are conserved currents that can be defined for the field that are, in certain senses, "associated with the Carter constant", the fluxes of these currents are not clearly related to the Carter constant for the particle. In this talk, we present our recent efforts to find such flux-balance laws, in the case of a point particle in Kerr that is coupled to a scalar field.

Semi-analytic solutions are useful because they are much faster than full numerical evolutions by virtue of the fact that they do not have to use as many points to achieve similar levels of accuracy. Currently there exists a semi-analytic solution for spin precessing binaries, which is implemented in LIGO and used to generate waveforms for comparison with gravitational waves. This solution comes with a caveat: it was calculated using precession averaged equations and thus has an oscillating error associated with the unaccounted for precession. This error is large enough that it can’t be overlooked for second and third generation detectors. By using near identity transforms (NITs) to reintroduce the effects of precession to the evolution, we can lower the error significantly. When implementing the NIT we found that the phase of oscillations we introduce (which coincides with the precession phase) does not line up with the precession in the numerical evolution, this causes the NIT to be less effective at reducing the error than it could be. To fix this issue we also introduce corrections to the evolution of the precession phase that were previously overlooked.

Analysing the data for the upcoming LISA mission will require extreme mass ratio inpsiral (EMRI) waveforms waveforms that are not only accurate but also fast to compute and extensive in the parameter space. To this end, we present a method for rapidly calculating the inspiral trajectory of EMRIs with a spinning primary. We extend the work of van de Meent and Warburton (2018) by applying the technique of near-identity (averaging) transformations (NITs) to the osculating geodesic equations for a rotating (Kerr) black hole, resulting in equations of motion that do not explicitly depend upon the orbital phases. This allows us accurately to calculate the evolving constants of motion, orbital phases and waveform phase to within subradian accuracy, while dramatically reducing computational cost. We have implemented this scheme with an interpolated gravitational self-force model in both the equatorial and the spherical cases as a proof of concept, and present the first inspirals in Kerr spacetime to include all first order self-force effects.

We present EMRISur1dq1e6, a reduced-order multi-mode time-domain surrogate model of gravitational waveforms for non-spinning black hole binary systems with comparable- to extreme mass-ratio configurations. This surrogate model is trained on waveform data generated by a point-particle black hole perturbation theory (ppBHPT) framework computed from a high-performance Teukolsky equation solver code. In the comparable mass-ratio regime, the gravitational waveforms generated through ppBHPT agree surprisingly well with those from full numerical relativity after scaling of the ppBHPT’s total mass parameter. This model extends the EMRISur1dq1e4 waveform model, which spans 13,500M in duration and includes modes only up to (l,m)=(5,5). EMRISur1dq1e6, on the other hand, covers mass ratios from 3 to 1,00,000, can generate waveforms of duration up to 350,000M, and includes several spherical harmonic modes up to (l,m)=(10,10). The accuracy of training data is further improved by employing an updated plunge model in the ppBHPT framework. EMRISur1dq1e6 surrogate model has been extended to enable data analysis studies in the high-mass ratio regime, including potential intermediate mass-ratio signals from LIGO/Virgo and events of interest to the future observatories such as Einstein Telescope, Voyager and Cosmic Explorer.