ÃÛÌÒTV

I consider eccentric orbits of a small body (or particle) about a  Schwarzschild black hole. The geodesic motion of the particle serves  to source the first-order field equations. These equations have typically  been solved in either the Lorenz or Regge-Wheeler-Zerilli gauge. The former  is advantageous because many self-force calculations (e.g., mode-sum  regularization) were originally formulated in the Lorenz gauge. The latter has  the advantage of being a more efficient gauge for solving the field  equations numerically.

I will present work from an ongoing effort to use solutions in the Regge-Wheeler-Zerilli gauge to perform self-force calculations. The central  idea is to use the local knowledge of the solutions to analytically construct  a gauge vector which pushes those solutions to a gauge that is more  regular and has a similar local structure to the Lorenz gauge.