15th Capra Meeting on Radiation Reaction in General Relativity

Two-timescale description of zoom-whirl orbits

Tanja Hinderer

University of Maryland

For an EMRI, most of the inspiral proceeds adiabatically and can be modeled using two-timescale expansions, augmented by treatments of isolated resonances. This description only breaks down close to the separatrix where orbits become unstable and transition to a plunge. For generic orbits, this regime is characterized by zoom-whirl behavior. I will discuss a systematic extension of the two-timescale formalism which remains valid for describing the orbital evolution during the zoom-whirl epoch.