One of the landmark scientific events of this century was the detection of gravitational waves by the LIGO observatories in 2015. The most potent sources of gravitational wave are the coalescence of compact objects in astrophysical binaries. A particular class of binaries mergers is the falling of a stellar-mass body into a supermassive black hole, also known as extreme mass ratio inspiral (EMRI). These events are expected to be one of the primary sources observable by future space-borne observatories such as Laser-Interferometry-Space-Antenna (LISA). EMRIs have rich waveforms with hundreds of thousands of cycles, which allow measuring the parameters of the binaries with unprecedented precision. On the other hand, the theoretical modeling and data analysis of these events are challenging. One of the critical elements to model in the dynamics is the spin of the smaller companion.
In the first part of the talk, I will briefly introduce the theory of gravitational waves and their sources. I will then give an overview of source modeling and parameter estimation of gravitational waves for EMRIs. In the last part, I will focus on EMRIs binaries with a spinning secondary.