Description
Extreme Mass-Ratio Inspirals are a promising source for precision gravitational wave astronomy. This promise can only be fulfilled if we manage to produce equally precise waveform models. Producing such models is extremely challenging, even in “vanilla” vacuum general relativity, requiring intricate gravitational self-force (GSF) calculations. This can make modelling beyond vacuum GR perturbations to EMRIs seem daunting. Luckily, at leading post-adiabatic order the calculation of GSF and beyond vacuum GR corrections completely decouples, allowing both problems to be pursued independently and in parallel. We review the common post-adiabatic framework for including perturbations to EMRIs, and classify different potential contributions.
