CARTER'S CONSTANT REVEALED

A new formulation of Carter's constant for geodesic motion in Kerr black holes is given. It is shown that Carter's constant corresponds to the total angular momentum plus a precisely defined part which is quadratic in the linear momenta. The characterization is exact in the weak field limit obtained by letting the gravitational constant go to zero. It is suggested that the new form can be useful in current studies of the dynamics of extreme mass ratio inspiral (EMRI) systems emitting gravitational radiation.