Effective tools for binary black hole dynamics

Abstract

Gravitational wave observations have unveiled the population of merging black holes and neutron stars, providing direct access to strong-field gravity and dense nuclear matter. These compact binaries emit gravitational radiation as they inspiral and merge, producing waveforms that encode: the masses and spins of the constituents, neutron star's equation of state, the properties of gravity in extreme regimes, and details of their astrophysical environments. Extracting this information requires precise theoretical predictions for comparison with observations. Next-generation detectors, both ground and space-based, are expected to observe 10^3-10^5+ cycles of a given binary merger, with potentially many thousands of events per year across disparate regimes of masses, eccentricities, etc. At this scale, numerical relativity simulations alone become computationally prohibitive, making precision analytical calculations essential.

In this talk I will present new analytical approaches to the gravitational two-body problem that combine effective field theory techniques from particle physics together with tools from General Relativity. I will discuss methods for computing the dynamics of isolated binaries at high perturbative orders, as well as methods for describing binaries embedded in gaseous or dark matter environments where environmental effects modify the orbital evolution and gravitational wave signal.