Estimating High-Order Time Derivatives of Kerr Orbital Functionals

Abstract

Functions of bound Kerr geodesic motion play a central role in many calculations in relativistic astrophysics, ranging from gravitational-wave generation to self-force and radiation-reaction modeling. Although these functions can be expressed as a Fourier series using the geodesic fundamental frequencies, reconstructing them in coordinate time is challenging due to the coupling of the radial and polar motions. In this paper, we compare two strategies for performing such reconstructions and their ability to estimate high-order coordinate-time derivatives of the orbital functional. The first method maps Fourier coefficients from Mino to coordinate time; the second method fits a sampled time series of the function to a truncated coordinate-time Fourier series. While the latter method is prone to overfitting, it yields more accurate reconstructions and derivatives than the mapping, but completely misrepresents the harmonic content of the orbital functional. For the purpose of accurate coordinate-time derivative estimation, we propose a hybrid method: fit for the Mino-time coefficients, differentiate with respect to Mino time, then convert to coordinate time. Applied to the mass quadrupole of a generic Kerr geodesic, this hybrid method recovers the sixth derivative with a fractional residual $\sim10^{-6}$ using only two harmonics. For orbital functionals that depend explicitly on the geodesic orbit expressed in Boyer--Lindquist coordinates, we also provide a recursive procedure for computing coordinate-time derivatives using exact analytic expressions. These results offer a general framework for accurately evaluating high-order time derivatives along Kerr geodesic worldlines, with direct relevance to applications such as extreme-mass-ratio inspiral kludge waveform modeling, where such derivatives are key ingredients for precise gravitational-wave predictions.