Equatorial circular motion in a Kerr-like spacetime

Abstract: An study of the equatorial circular motion of photons and massive particles around a rotating compact body like a neutron star is presented. For this goal, we use an approximate Kerr-like metric with mass quadrupole as perturbation. The effect of this deformation on the photon sphere, and the innermost stable circular orbit, is determined via an effective potential. Furthermore, a stability anaysis is shown, where we observed the same behavior of the effective potential for co-rotating and counter-rotating particles. A comparison with the results for the innermost stable circular orbit obtained for the Hartle-Thorne spacetime is also presented.