Cross terms and monochromatic gravitational wave sources in our Galactic Centre

Abstract

The gravitational capture of a small compact object by a supermassive black hole is one of the most intriguing sources of gravitational waves to be detected by space-borne observatories. Modeling gravitational waves is a challenging task. However, various approximations exist that enable us to claim detection and perform parameter extraction with high accuracy on synthetic data. The first numerical implementation of relativistic corrections for an astrophysical system was conducted in a post-Newtonian (PN) framework, and since then, most comparable programmes have followed a similar approach. Nevertheless, the PN approach has been developed for two particles in a vacuum. Here, we present the first results on the impact of cross-terms in the PN scheme for ``monochromatic'' sources (meaning that the peak frequency does not evolve over the observational time), which account for the interplay between different bodies. We present a conceptual and illustrative study of the cross-terms on the first PN term in a group of three bodies representing asymmetric binaries (X-MRIs, E-EMRIs, and X-MRIs with E-EMRIs). We find that these cross-terms can lead to a complete phase shift of the gravitational wave by a few times $2π$ over periods of time of less than one year for the close binaries. Ignoring the cross-terms in the relativistic semi-Keplerian system can significantly complicate parameter extraction for monochromatic sources.