Image Details
Caption: Figure 2.
We show ﹩{\rm{\Delta }}{\psi }_{{\rm{lin}}}^{({\rm{golden}})}﹩, the gas-induced dephasing due to the linear torque for the “golden” EMRI in Equation (14), as a function of Eddington ratio (fEdd), the turbo-viscous coefficient (α), and the disk aspect ratio (h0) for our radiation-dominated disk profile. For each panel, we increase α vertically from 10−1.25 to 10−0.25 and h0 horizontally from 0.01 to 0.1, while keeping the Eddington ratio constant. The color bar shows the range of Δψlin from −100.5 to −10−3.5 rad. For each panel, cells left of the dashed black line have observable linear dephasing due to Δψlin > Δψcrit = 0.16 rad. Similarly, we mark this threshold in the color bar. Since Δψlin ∝ ﹩{{\rm{f}}}_{{\rm{Edd}}}^{-1}{\alpha }^{-1}{h}_{0}^{-2}﹩ in Equation (15), the linear dephasing increases with lower fEdd, α, and h0.
© 2026. The Author(s). Published by the American Astronomical Society.