Parameters of innermost stable circular orbits of spinning test particles: Numerical and analytical calculations

Abstract

The motion of classical spinning test particles in the equatorial plane of a Kerr black hole is considered for the case where the particle spin is perpendicular to the equatorial plane.We review some results of our recent research of the innermost stable circular orbits (ISCO) [1] and present some new calculations. The ISCO radius, total angular momentum, energy, and orbital angular frequency are considered. We calculate the ISCO parameters numerically for different values of the Kerr parameter a and investigate their dependence on both black hole and test particle spins. Then we describe in detail how to calculate analytically small-spin corrections to the ISCO parameters for an arbitrary values of a. The cases of Schwarzschild, slowly rotating Kerr and extreme Kerr black holes are considered. The use of the orbital angular momentum is discussed. We also consider the ISCO binding energy. It is shown that the efficiency of accretion onto an extreme Kerr black hole can be larger than the maximum known efficiency (42%) if the test body has a spin.