Gravitational waves via Kerr/CFT

Abstract

Massive objects orbiting a near-extreme Kerr black hole plunge into the horizon after passing the innermost stable circular orbit, producing a potentially observable signal of gravitational radiation. The near horizon dynamics of such rapidly rotating black holes is governed by a conformal symmetry. In the talk I will show how this symmetry can be exploited to analytically compute the gravitational waves produced by a variety of orbits. I will also discuss an application to gravitational self-force and comment on the holographic interpretation of the process.