Toward relativistic inspirals into black holes surrounded by matter

Abstract

Extreme mass ratio inspirals, compact objects spiraling into massive black holes, represent key sources for future space-based gravitational-wave detectors such as LISA. The inspirals will occur within rich astrophysical environments containing gravitating matter. Motivated by this, we develop a fully relativistic framework for inspirals under the gravitational influence of matter environments. Our approach employs a two-parameter perturbation expansion in the mass ratio and an environmental parameter. This yields a modified Teukolsky equation capturing the leading cross-order. We then implement a simple pole-dipole approximation of an axisymmetric environment through a thin matter shell and restrict to non-rotating black holes. As a result, we obtain a piecewise type D spacetime. This enables the use of Teukolsky-based methods while accounting for junction physics. The presence of the matter shell leads to effectively non-separable boundary conditions for the Teukolsky scalar and introduces mode mixing between adjacent multipoles. Additionally, the shell oscillates under the wave perturbation of the inspiral, contributing to the overall flux. The framework provides novel insights into the global dynamics of gravitational radiation in tidal environments. Furthermore, it represents a complete theoretical foundation for a future computation of inspirals and waveforms in our environmental model.