Abstract
The order of the post-Newtonian expansion needed to extract in a reliable and accurate manner the fully general relativistic gravitational wave signal from inspiraling compact binaries is explored. A class of approximate wave forms, called -approximants, is constructed based on the following two inputs: (a) the introduction of two new energy-type and flux-type functions and respectively, (b) the systematic use of the Padé approximation for constructing successive approximants of and . The new -approximants are not only more effectual (larger overlaps) and more faithful (smaller biases) than the standard Taylor approximants, but also converge faster and monotonically. The presently available -accurate post-Newtonian results can be used to construct -approximate wave forms that provide overlaps with the exact wave form larger than 96.5%, implying that more than 90% of potential events can be detected with the aid of -approximants as opposed to a mere 10–15 % that would be detectable using standard post-Newtonian approximants.
- Received 19 August 1997
DOI:https://doi.org/10.1103/PhysRevD.57.885
©1998 American Physical Society