Love in extrema ratio

Abstract

The tidal deformability of a self-gravitating object leaves an imprint on the gravitational-wave signal of an inspiral which is paramount to measure the internal structure of the binary components. We unveil here a surprisingly unnoticed effect: in the extreme mass-ratio limit the tidal Love number of the central object (i.e. the quadrupole moment induced by the tidal field of its companion) affects the gravitational waveform at the leading order in the mass ratio. This effect acts as a magnifying glass for the tidal deformability of supermassive objects but was so far neglected, probably because the tidal Love numbers of a black hole (the most natural candidate for a compact supermassive object) are identically zero. We argue that extreme mass-ratio inspirals detectable by the future laser interferometric space antenna (LISA) mission might place constraints on the tidal Love numbers of the central object which are roughly eight orders of magnitude more stringent than current ones on neutron stars, potentially probing all models of black hole mimickers proposed so far.