Extreme mass-ratio inspiral metric perturbations through elliptic PDEs

While you read this abstract, gravitational waves (GW) may be passing through you, generated millions of light years away from some of the most energetic astrophysical systems known in the universe. In succession to the ground-based GW detector LIGO, the space-based detector LISA will soon orbit the sun to explore new GW signals. To give a better understanding of what signals LISA should look for, we are doing computational modeling of Extreme Mass-Ratio Inspirals (EMRIs). We numerically solved the Einstein Field Equations in the frequency domain as a set of coupled elliptic PDEs with a metric perturbation for a small body inspiraling into a large black hole, which has provided insightful results including graphs of waveforms an EMRI would produce, using Mathematica. This initial investigation considered an inspiral into a non-spinning black hole. The Kerr Metric will be used next to represent a more realistic astrophysical scenario of a small body inspiraling into a rotating black hole.