Gravitational Waves from merging binaries

TL;DR

This paper uses a Newtonian approach supplemented with Post-Newtonian inputs to analyze gravitational waves from merging binaries, providing order-of-magnitude estimates and source range predictions.

Contribution

It introduces a simplified physics-based method to understand gravitational wave signals and estimates their detectability for various binary systems.

Findings

Approximate calculations match key signal features.

Estimated detection ranges for different binary sources.

Analyzed known binary pulsar systems for gravitational wave signals.

Abstract

We discuss gravitational waves from merging binaries using a Newtonian approach with some inputs from the Post-Newtonian formalism. We show that it is possible to understand the key features of the signal using fundamental physics and also demonstrate that an approximate calculation gives us the correct order of magnitude estimate of the parameters describing the merging binary system. We build on this analysis to understand the range for different types of sources for given detector sensitivity. We also consider known binary pulsar systems and discuss the expected gravitational wave signal from these.