Hereditary effects in eccentric compact binary inspirals to third post-Newtonian order

Nicholas Loutrel, Nicolás Yunes

Research output: Contribution to journalArticlepeer-review

Abstract

While there has been much success in understanding the orbital dynamics and gravitational wave emission of eccentric compact binaries in the post-Newtonian formalism, some problems still remain. The largest of these concerns hereditary effects: non-linear phenomena related to the scattering off of the background curved spacetime (tails) and to the generation of gravitational waves by gravitational waves (memory). Currently, these hereditary effects are only known numerically for arbitrary eccentricity through infinite sums of Bessel functions, with closed-form, analytic results only available in the small eccentricity limit. We here calculate, for the first time, closed-form, analytic expressions for all hereditary effects to third post-Newtonian order in binaries with arbitrary eccentricity. For the tails, we first asymptotically expand all Bessel functions in high eccentricity and find a superasymptotic series for each enhancement factor, accurate to better than 10-3 relative to post-Newtonian numerical calculations at all eccentricities. We further improve the small-eccentricity behavior of the superasymptotic series by generating hyperasymptotic expressions for each enhancement factor, typically accurate to better than 10-8 at all eccentricities. For the memory, we discuss its computation within the context of an osculating approximation of the binary's orbit and the difficulties that arise. Our closed-form analytic expressions for the hereditary fluxes allow us to numerically compute orbital phases that are identical to those found using an infinite sum of Bessel functions to double numerical precision.

Original languageEnglish (US)
Article number044003
JournalClassical and Quantum Gravity
Volume34
Issue number4
DOIs
StatePublished - Feb 2 2017
Externally publishedYes

Keywords

  • eccentric binaries
  • gravitational waves
  • hereditary effects

ASJC Scopus subject areas

  • Physics and Astronomy (miscellaneous)

Fingerprint

Dive into the research topics of 'Hereditary effects in eccentric compact binary inspirals to third post-Newtonian order'. Together they form a unique fingerprint.

Cite this