Abstract
We discuss, in the perturbative regime, the scattering of Gaussian pulses of odd-parity gravitational radiation off a nonrotating relativistic star and a Schwarzschild black hole. We focus on the excitation of the -modes of the star as a function of the width of the pulse and we contrast it with the outcome of a Schwarzschild black hole of the same mass. For sufficiently narrow values of , the waveforms are dominated by characteristic space-time modes. On the other hand, for sufficiently large values of the backscattered signal is dominated by the tail of the Regge-Wheeler potential, the quasinormal modes are not excited and the nature of the central object cannot be established. We view this work as a useful contribution to the comparison between perturbative results and forthcoming -mode 3D-nonlinear numerical simulation.
- Received 9 October 2007
DOI:https://doi.org/10.1103/PhysRevD.77.044042
©2008 American Physical Society