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Updated: Apr 21, 2026

Magnetically Induced Rotating Rayleigh-Taylor Instability
Published on: March 3, 2017
Gravitational self-force correction to the innermost stable circular equatorial orbit of a Kerr black hole
Soichiro Isoyama1, Leor Barack2, Sam R Dolan3
1Yukawa Institute for Theoretical Physics, Kyoto University, Kyoto 606-8502, Japan and Division of Particle and Astrophysical Science, Graduate School of Science, Nagoya University, Nagoya 464-8602, Japan.
Abstract:
For a self-gravitating particle of mass μ in orbit around a Kerr black hole of mass M ≫ μ, we compute the O(μ/M) shift in the frequency of the innermost stable circular equatorial orbit due to the conservative piece of the gravitational self-force acting on the particle. Our treatment is based on a Hamiltonian formulation of the dynamics in terms of geodesic motion in a certain locally defined effective smooth spacetime. We recover the same result using the so-called first law of binary black-hole mechanics. We give numerical results for the innermost stable circular equatorial orbit frequency shift as a function of the black hole's spin amplitude, and compare with predictions based on the post-Newtonian approximation and the effective one-body model. Our results provide an accurate strong-field benchmark for spin effects in the general-relativistic two-body problem.
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