Influence of mass-ratio corrections in extreme-mass-ratio inspirals for testing general relativity

Abstract

The popular waveform templates of extreme-mass-ratio inspirals usually omit the mass-ratio corrections in conservative dynamics, and employ adiabatic approximation to include the radiation reaction. With the help of effective-one-body dynamics, we investigate the influence of mass-ratio corrections in the conservative part on the gravitational waves. We find that for the extra-relativistic orbits, the mass-ratio corrections can produce obvious orbital dephasing even for a very small mass ratio and then affect the waveforms. More importantly, it is noted that omitting the mass-ratio corrections in waveform templates may induce a fake signal of deviation from general relativity.