Phasing of gravitational waves from inspiralling eccentric binaries

Thibault Damour, Achamveedu Gopakumar, and Bala R. Iyer
Phys. Rev. D 70, 064028 – Published 17 September 2004

Abstract

We provide a method for analytically constructing high-accuracy templates for the gravitational-wave signals emitted by compact binaries moving in inspiralling eccentric orbits. In contrast to the simpler problem of modeling the gravitational-wave signals emitted by inspiralling circular orbits, which contain only two different time scales, namely, those associated with the orbital motion and the radiation reaction, the case of inspiralling eccentric orbits involves three different time scales: orbital period, periastron precession, and radiation-reaction time scales. By using an improved “method of variation of constants,” we show how to combine these three time scales, without making the usual approximation of treating the radiative time scale as an adiabatic process. We explicitly implement our method at the 2.5PN post-Newtonian accuracy. Our final results can be viewed as computing new “postadiabatic” short-period contributions to the orbital phasing or, equivalently, new short-period contributions to the gravitational-wave polarizations, h+,×, that should be explicitly added to the “post-Newtonian” expansion for h+,×, if one treats radiative effects on the orbital phasing of the latter in the usual adiabatic approximation. Our results should be of importance both for the LIGO/VIRGO/GEO network of ground based interferometric gravitational-wave detectors (especially if Kozai oscillations turn out to be significant in globular cluster triplets) and for the future space-based interferometer LISA.

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  • Received 29 April 2004

DOI:https://doi.org/10.1103/PhysRevD.70.064028

©2004 American Physical Society

Authors & Affiliations

Thibault Damour1, Achamveedu Gopakumar2,3, and Bala R. Iyer4

  • 1Institut des Hautes Etudes Scientifiques, 91440 Bures-sur-Yvette, France
  • 2Theoretisch-Physikalisches Institut, Friedrich-Schiller-Universität, Max-Wien-Platz 1, 07743 Jena, Germany
  • 3Department of Physics, University of Guelph, Canada N1G 2W1
  • 4Raman Research Institute, Bangalore 560 080, India

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Issue

Vol. 70, Iss. 6 — 15 September 2004

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