Self-forced evolutions of an implicit rotating source: A natural framework to model comparable and intermediate mass-ratio systems from inspiral through ringdown

Abstract

We develop a waveform model to describe the inspiral, merger and ringdown of binary systems with comparable and intermediate mass-ratios. This model incorporates first-order conservative self-force corrections to the energy and angular momentum, which are valid in the strong-field regime [1]. We model the radiative part of the self-force by deriving second-order radiative corrections to the energy flux. These corrections are obtained by minimizing the phase discrepancy between our self-force model and the effective one body model [2, 3] for a variety of mass-ratios. We show that our model performs substantially better than post-Newtonian approximants currently used to model neutron star-black hole mergers from early inspiral to the innermost stable circular orbit. In order to match the late inspiral evolution onto the plunge regime, we extend the 'transition phase' developed by Ori and Thorne [4] by including finite mass-ratio corrections and modelling the orbital phase evolution using an implicit rotating source [5]. We explicitly show that the implicit rotating source approach provides a natural transition from late-time radiation to ringdown that is equivalent to ringdown waveform modelling based on a sum of quasinormal modes.