Recent developments in the tidal deformability of spinning compact objects

We review recent work on the theory of tidal deformability and the tidal Love numbers of a slowly spinning compact object within general relativity. Angular momentum introduces couplings between distortions of different parity and new classes of spin-induced, tidal Love numbers emerge. Due to spin-tidal effects, a rotating object immersed in a quadrupolar, electric tidal field can acquire some induced mass, spin, quadrupole, octupole and hexadecapole moments to second-order in the spin. The tidal Love numbers depend strongly on the object’s internal structure. All tidal Love numbers of a Kerr black hole (BH) were proved to be exactly zero to first-order in the spin and also to second-order in the spin, at least in the axisymmetric case. For a binary system close to the merger, various components of the tidal field become relevant. Preliminary results suggest that spin-tidal couplings can introduce important corrections to the gravitational waveforms of spinning neutron star (NS) binaries approaching the merger.