Chaotic migration of LISA Extreme Mass Ratio Inspirals in a turbulent accretion disk: effect on waveform de-phasing
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2026
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| author | Garg, Mudit Mayer, Lucio Wu, Yinhao Ali-Haïmoud, Yacine Lin, Douglas N. C. |
| author_facet | Garg, Mudit Mayer, Lucio Wu, Yinhao Ali-Haïmoud, Yacine Lin, Douglas N. C. |
| contents | Gravitational wave (GW) detector LISA will observe near-coalescence extreme mass ratio inspirals (EMRIs), which typically form in galactic central accretion disks. Gas torques on EMRI will alter its GW-driven inspiral trajectory from the vacuum expectation, leading to potentially LISA-observable GW dephasing ($Δψ_{\rm gas}$). Most studies compute $Δψ_{\rm gas}$ for a thin, laminar disk, with negligible flow turbulence, where the disk exerts a fairly well-understood linear torque ($T_{\rm lin}$). However, these disks must be turbulent due to magneto-rotational instability in the inner regions. Hence, we present a proof-of-concept general, agnostic prescription for the turbulent torque ($T_{\rm turb}$) acting on an EMRI by modeling it as a Gaussian distribution around $T_{\rm lin}$, based on recent advances from a global hydrodynamical (HD) study. We compute $Δψ_{\rm gas}$ for the ``golden'' circular EMRI with total source mass $M=10^6~{\rm M}_\odot$ and mass ratio $q=5\times10^{-5}$ in its final four-year evolution at redshift $z=0.276$ and signal-to-noise ratio (SNR) $=50$ by varying Eddington ratio ${\rm f}_{\rm Edd}$, turbulence normalization $C$ ($=~360$ in the aforementioned HD study), disk aspect ratio $h_0$, and turbo-viscous coefficient $α$ in a reasonable parameters space. We find that for ${\rm f}_{\rm Edd}\gtrsim0.3$, $C\gtrsim300$, $h_0\gtrsim0.03$, and $α\gtrsim0.1$, gas-induced dephasings are unobservable if only considering $T_{\rm lin}$ but could become detectable ($Δψ_{\rm gas}>8/$SNR) if EMRIs exhibit chaotic migration due to turbulent gas flow. Hence, this work motivates running MHD simulations of accretion disks with embedded LISA EMRIs in the early in-spiral phase over long enough timescales to understand the evolution of their orbital elements and the imprint of the turbulent environment on their gravitational waveforms. |
| format | Preprint |
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arxiv_https___arxiv_org_abs_2604_20971 |
| institution | arXiv |
| publishDate | 2026 |
| record_format | arxiv |
| spellingShingle | Chaotic migration of LISA Extreme Mass Ratio Inspirals in a turbulent accretion disk: effect on waveform de-phasing Garg, Mudit Mayer, Lucio Wu, Yinhao Ali-Haïmoud, Yacine Lin, Douglas N. C. Astrophysics of Galaxies High Energy Astrophysical Phenomena General Relativity and Quantum Cosmology Gravitational wave (GW) detector LISA will observe near-coalescence extreme mass ratio inspirals (EMRIs), which typically form in galactic central accretion disks. Gas torques on EMRI will alter its GW-driven inspiral trajectory from the vacuum expectation, leading to potentially LISA-observable GW dephasing ($Δψ_{\rm gas}$). Most studies compute $Δψ_{\rm gas}$ for a thin, laminar disk, with negligible flow turbulence, where the disk exerts a fairly well-understood linear torque ($T_{\rm lin}$). However, these disks must be turbulent due to magneto-rotational instability in the inner regions. Hence, we present a proof-of-concept general, agnostic prescription for the turbulent torque ($T_{\rm turb}$) acting on an EMRI by modeling it as a Gaussian distribution around $T_{\rm lin}$, based on recent advances from a global hydrodynamical (HD) study. We compute $Δψ_{\rm gas}$ for the ``golden'' circular EMRI with total source mass $M=10^6~{\rm M}_\odot$ and mass ratio $q=5\times10^{-5}$ in its final four-year evolution at redshift $z=0.276$ and signal-to-noise ratio (SNR) $=50$ by varying Eddington ratio ${\rm f}_{\rm Edd}$, turbulence normalization $C$ ($=~360$ in the aforementioned HD study), disk aspect ratio $h_0$, and turbo-viscous coefficient $α$ in a reasonable parameters space. We find that for ${\rm f}_{\rm Edd}\gtrsim0.3$, $C\gtrsim300$, $h_0\gtrsim0.03$, and $α\gtrsim0.1$, gas-induced dephasings are unobservable if only considering $T_{\rm lin}$ but could become detectable ($Δψ_{\rm gas}>8/$SNR) if EMRIs exhibit chaotic migration due to turbulent gas flow. Hence, this work motivates running MHD simulations of accretion disks with embedded LISA EMRIs in the early in-spiral phase over long enough timescales to understand the evolution of their orbital elements and the imprint of the turbulent environment on their gravitational waveforms. |
| title | Chaotic migration of LISA Extreme Mass Ratio Inspirals in a turbulent accretion disk: effect on waveform de-phasing |
| topic | Astrophysics of Galaxies High Energy Astrophysical Phenomena General Relativity and Quantum Cosmology |
| url | https://arxiv.org/abs/2604.20971 |