Construction of the second-order gravitational perturbations produced by a compact object
- Department of Physics, University of Guelph, Guelph, Ontario N1G 2W1 (Canada)
Accurate calculation of the gradual inspiral motion in an extreme mass-ratio binary system, in which a compact object inspiral towards a supermassive black hole requires calculation of the interaction between the compact object and the gravitational perturbations that it induces. These metric perturbations satisfy linear partial differential equations on a curved background space-time induced by the supermassive black hole. At the point-particle limit the second-order perturbations equations have source terms that diverge as r{sup -4}, where r is the distance from the particle. This singular behavior renders the standard retarded solutions of these equations ill defined. Here we resolve this problem and construct well-defined and physically meaningful solutions to these equations. We recently presented an outline of this resolution [E. Rosenthal, Phys. Rev. D 72, 121503 (2005).]. Here we provide the full details of this analysis. These second-order solutions are important for practical calculations: the planned gravitational-wave detector LISA requires preparation of waveform templates for the potential gravitational waves. Construction of templates with desired accuracy for extreme mass-ratio binaries requires accurate calculation of the inspiral motion including the interaction with the second-order gravitational perturbations.
- OSTI ID:
- 20776772
- Journal Information:
- Physical Review. D, Particles Fields, Vol. 73, Issue 4; Other Information: DOI: 10.1103/PhysRevD.73.044034; (c) 2006 The American Physical Society; Country of input: International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA); ISSN 0556-2821
- Country of Publication:
- United States
- Language:
- English
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