Dynamics of extended spinning masses in a gravitational field

Abstract

We develop a first-order approximation method for the influence of spin on the motion of extended spinning test masses in a gravitational field. This approach is illustrated for approximately circular equatorial motion in the exterior Kerr spacetime. In this case, the analytic results for the first-order approximation are compared to the numerical integration of the exact system and the limitations of the first-order results are pointed out. Furthermore, we employ our analytic results to illustrate the gravitomagnetic clock effect for spinning particles.