Periodic orbits as probes of charged loop quantum gravity black holes through gravitational waves

Abstract

Gravitational waves from extreme-mass-ratio inspirals (EMRI) provide a direct probe of the strong-field geometry of black holes. Motivated by this, we study the motion of test particles and the resulting gravitational wave emission in the spacetime of a charged black hole inspired by loop quantum gravity (LQG), where the classical singularity is replaced by a smooth transition surface arising from the LQG polymerization, in which its radius is set by the LQG area gap condition. As a result, the polymerization parameter $δ_b$ is uniquely determined by the mass $M$ and charge parameter $Q$, so that all cases examined in this work contain LQG correction. By constructing the effective potential, the innermost stable circular orbit (ISCO) and the marginally bound orbit (MBO) are determined. Periodic orbits are classified using the Levin-Perez-Giz zoom-whirl taxonomy, showing how the orbit topology shapes the waveform, so that each closed trajectory is labeled by the triple integer $(z, w, v)$ and located through the rational frequency ratio $q = ω_ϕ/ω_r - 1$. Within the quadrupole approximation, the gravitational waveforms for an EMRIs are estimated, and the resulting polarizations are obtained in the time-domain and frequency-domain. The resulting polarizations in the time-domain exhibit a zoom-whirl morphology, with the waveform amplitude and phase dependent on the LQG parameter. The characteristic strain peaks in the millihertz band for all values of the charge parameter $Q$, and they exceed the projected sensitivities of LISA, Taiji, and TianQin, suggesting that future observations could place meaningful constraints on the LQG polymerization parameter in the strong-field regime.