The orbital Lense-Thirring precession in a strong field

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Publication:2003385



Abstract: We study the exact evolution of the orbital angular momentum of a massive particle in the gravitational field of a Kerr black hole. We show analytically that, for a wide class of orbits, the angular momentum's hodograph is always close to a circle. This applies to both bounded and unbounded orbits that do not end up in the black hole. Deviations from the circular shape do not exceed approx10% and approx7% for bounded and unbounded orbits, respectively. We also find that nutation provides an accurate approximation for those deviations, which fits the exact curve within sim0.01% for the orbits of maximal deviation. Remarkably, the more the deviation, the better the nutation approximates it. Thus, we demonstrate that the orbital Lense-Thirring precession, originally obtained in the weak-field limit, is also a valid description in the general case of (almost) arbitrary exact orbits. As a by-product, we also derive the parameters of unstable spherical timelike orbits as a function of their radii and arbitrary rotation parameter a and Carter's constant Q. We verify our results numerically for all the kinds of orbits studied.






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