Sergi Navarro Albalat, UT-Austin

"Numerical relativity meets the small mass ratio limit: assessing the domain of applicability of gravitational self force"

Abstract: I will be presenting results at the interplay between two techniques to model the gravitational waves of a binary black hole: numerical relativity (NR) and gravitational self force (GSF). First, I will briefly motivate and describe the use of these two techniques. In particular, I will show how we can assess the domain of applicability of GSF by comparing to NR simulations. I will illustrate the current state of the art from an analysis of the GW phase evolution of non-spinning circular binaries during the inspiral regime. In the second part of my talk I will present results from three papers that push the NR-GSF comparisons in different directions: use of various gauge invariant quantities, generalization to eccentric orbits and modeling of the transition from inspiral to plunge, with direct applications to LIGO-VIrgo-KAGRA and LISA.