Post-1-Newtonian equations of motion for systems of arbitrarily structured bodies

We give a surface-integral derivation of post-1-Newtonian translational equations of motion for a system of arbitrarily structured bodies, including the coupling to all the bodies' mass and current multipole moments. The derivation requires only that the post-1-Newtonian vacuum field equations are satisfied in weak field regions between the bodies; the bodies' internal gravity can be arbitrarily strong. In particular, black holes are not excluded. The derivation extends previous results due to Damour, Soffel, and Xu (DSX) for weakly self-gravitating bodies in which the post-1-Newtonian field equations are satisfied everywhere. The derivation consists of a number of steps: (i) The definition of each body’s current and mass multipole moments and center-of-mass world line in terms of the behavior of the metric in a weak field region surrounding the body. (ii) The definition for each body of a set of gravitoelectric and gravitomagnetic tidal moments that act on that body, again in terms of the behavior of the metric in a weak field region surrounding the body. For the special case of weakly self-gravitating bodies, our definitions of these multipole and tidal moments agree with definitions given previously by DSX. (iii) The derivation of a formula, for any given body, of the second time derivative of its mass dipole moment in terms of its other multipole and tidal moments and their time derivatives. This formula was obtained previously by DSX for weakly self-gravitating bodies. (iv) A derivation of the relation between the tidal moments acting on each body and the multipole moments and center-of-mass world lines of all the other bodies. A formalism to compute this relation was developed by DSX; we simplify their formalism and compute the relation explicitly. (v) The deduction from the previous steps of the explicit translational equations of motion, whose form has not been previously derived.

Figure 1

An illustration of our assumptions for a system of $N$ bodies. Each body is surrounded by a strong field region which is excluded from our analysis. Surrounding these strong field regions are weak field buffer regions. Each body’s center-of-mass world line and mass and current multipole moments are defined in terms of the behavior of the metric in that body’s buffer region. We assume that the vacuum post-1-Newtonian field equations are satisfied in all the buffer regions and in the regions of space between the buffer regions.