Self-consistent evolution of EMRIs

Lidia Gomes Da Silva (SISSA)

Time:

11AM Wednesday, 07 October 2026

Location:

Science North, N0.20

LISA's extreme-mass-ratio inspirals demand waveforms accurate to a fraction of a radian over $\sim10^5$ orbital cycles. The gravitational self-force programe meets this challenge through perturbative expansions in the mass ratio, together with multiscale expansions of the inspiral dynamics. A self-consistent evolution instead advances the field and worldline together, with the self-force evaluated on the evolving worldline and fed directly back into its motion, without a separate expansion in orbital timescales. It therefore provides an important benchmark against which approximate inspiral schemes can be tested, while offering a natural framework for modelling regimes in which the usual separation of timescales becomes challenging, including resonances and the transition from inspiral to plunge. In this talk, I will update the BHPToolkit-UCD group on upgrades to the legacy SelfForce1D work package that enable a self-consistent evolution.