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arXiv · 2606.27016

Time-domain evolution of Lorenz-gauge metric perturbations: taming the $\ell=m=1$ gauge instability

Jonathan Thornburg
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Abstract

Calculating the spacetime metric perturbation (MP) sourced by a small "particle" of mass $\mu M$ (with $0 < \mu \ll 1$) moving in a Schwarzschild or Kerr "background" black hole spacetime of mass $M$ is a longstanding research area in general relativity. This calculation also has an important astrophysical motivation as a major step in calculating the gravitational waves emitted by an extreme-mass-ratio inspiral system. Here I consider the specific problem of the time-domain calculation of the $\mathcal{O}(\mu)$ Lorenz-gauge MP $h_{ab}$ sourced by the particle. Decomposing the Schwarzschild-background MP into $e^{im\phi}$ modes, Dolan and Barack [Phys. Rev. D 87, 084066 (2013), arXiv:1211.4586] found that the $m=1$ time-domain Lorenz-gauge MP generically contains an \emph{unstable gauge mode} which grows linearly with time. Here I demonstrate a method for computing a Lorenz-gauge time-domain evolution which is mostly free of this gauge mode. This method computes an "orthogonalized" MP $h_{ab}^\text{ortho}$ as a linear combination of the sourced MP and a homogeneous MP $h_{ab}^\text{hom}$ (evolved in parallel with the sourced MP). The linear combination is updated "occasionally" to make $h_{ab}^\text{ortho}$ orthogonal to $h_{ab}^\text{hom}$ with respect to a chosen inner product on MPs. I show that, for a Schwarzschild-circular-orbit test case, the resulting $h_{ab}^\text{ortho}$ satisfies the $\mathcal{O}(\mu)$ Einstein equations and Lorenz gauge conditions, remains bounded as $t \to \infty$, and at late (finite) times contains only a small component of the unstable gauge mode. These results hold both with the particle modelled via MP jump conditions and with particle modelled by a "effective source". My numerical code for obtaining all of these results is included with this paper, and will be deposited in the Black Hole Perturbation Toolkit.

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Jonathan Thornburg. 2026-06-25. Time-domain evolution of Lorenz-gauge metric perturbations: taming the $\ell=m=1$ gauge instability. https://arxiv.org/abs/2606.27016

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