Mummery Andrew, Balbus Steven
Oxford Astrophysics, Denys Wilkinson Building, Keble Road, Oxford, OX1 3RH, United Kingdom.
Phys Rev Lett. 2022 Oct 14;129(16):161101. doi: 10.1103/PhysRevLett.129.161101.
We present exact solutions of test particle orbits spiraling inward from the innermost stable circular orbit (ISCO) of a Kerr black hole. Our results are valid for any allowed value of the angular momentum a parameter of the Kerr metric. These solutions are of considerable physical interest. In particular, the radial four-velocity of these orbits is both remarkably simple and, with the radial coordinate scaled by its ISCO value, universal in form, otherwise completely independent of the black hole spin.