On the integrability of extended test body dynamics around black holes

In general relativity, the motion of an extended test body is influenced by its proper rotation, or spin. We present a covariant and physically self-consistent Hamiltonian framework to study this motion, up to quadratic order in the body’s spin, including a spin-induced quadrupole, and in an arbitrary background spacetime. The choice of spin supplementary condition and degeneracies associated with local Lorentz invariance are treated rigorously with adapted tools from Hamiltonian mechanics. Applying the formalism to a background space-time described by the Kerr metric, we prove that the motion of any test compact object around a rotating black hole defines an integrable Hamiltonian system to linear order in the body’s spin. Moreover, this integrability still holds at quadratic order in spin when the compact object has the deformability expected for an isolated black hole. By exploiting the unique symmetries at play in black hole binaries, our analytical results clarify longstanding numerical conjectures regarding spin-induced chaos in the motion of asymmetric compact binaries, and may provide a powerful framework to improve current gravitational waveform modelling.