Environmental Imprints of Dark Matter and Accretion Disks on Eccentric EMRIs around Kerr Black Holes

arXiv:2609.29770 · gr-qc, astro-ph.GA · Submitted 2026-09-24 · Read on arXiv

gr-qc, astro-ph.GA

Submitted: 2026-09-24

Updated: 2026-09-24

Comments: 30 pages, 11 figures

License: http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/

The gist: Extreme-mass-ratio inspirals (EMRIs), systems in which a stellar-mass compact object spirals into a supermassive black hole (M 1), are prime targets for the space-based gravitational-wave

Terminology

Abstract

Extreme-mass-ratio inspirals (EMRIs), systems in which a stellar-mass compact object spirals into a supermassive black hole (M 1), are prime targets for the space-based gravitational-wave interferometers and are acutely sensitive to their astrophysical environment. We quantify the joint imprint of a dark matter (DM) spike and an accretion disk on the waveforms of eccentric, equatorial Kerr EMRIs, integrating four modular effects---DM dynamical friction, DM self-gravity, Newtonian accretion-disk torques, and disk self-gravity---into a fifth post-Newtonian (5PN) augmented analytic kludge (AAK) waveform model, and assess their measurability via a Fisher-matrix analysis. The DM dynamical-friction dephasing peaks at M 1 about 10 6,M, reaching about 10 squared -- 10 cubed, rad; there the DM spike slope is measurable to sub-percent precision and both DM channels are unambiguously detectable, while omitting DM biases the intrinsic parameters significantly. At M 1 10 8,M the DM and disk self-gravity channels dominate their dissipative counterparts. The disk parameters remain degenerate across the explored parameter space, since the supersonic regime dominates the inspiral and the subsonic-to-supersonic transition only mildly weakens this degeneracy without lifting it; a combined DM + disk analysis further reveals a cross-sector degeneracy between the DM slope and the disk parameters. This physical degeneracy, reflected in the near-singular Fisher matrix, implies that independently measuring the disk parameters requires a relativistic torque model or an electromagnetic counterpart.

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