Higher-order spin effects in the dynamics of compact binaries II. Radiation field

TL;DR

This paper advances the modeling of gravitational waves from spinning binary black holes by calculating spin effects up to 2.5PN order, improving waveform templates for gravitational wave detectors.

Contribution

It provides new calculations of spin-orbit effects and gravitational-wave flux at higher PN orders, enhancing the accuracy of waveform templates for spinning black-hole binaries.

Findings

Spin-orbit coupling effects computed at 1PN beyond leading order.

Gravitational-wave energy flux contributions from spin effects calculated.

Secular orbital phase evolution determined up to 2.5PN order.

Abstract

Motivated by the search for gravitational waves emitted by binary black holes, we investigate the gravitational radiation field of point particles with spins within the framework of the multipolar-post-Newtonian wave generation formalism. We compute: (i) the spin-orbit (SO) coupling effects in the binary's mass and current quadrupole moments one post-Newtonian (1PN) order beyond the dominant effect, (ii) the SO contributions in the gravitational-wave energy flux and (iii) the secular evolution of the binary's orbital phase up to 2.5PN order. Crucial ingredients for obtaining the 2.5PN contribution in the orbital phase are the binary's energy and the spin precession equations, derived in paper I of this series. These results provide more accurate gravitational-wave templates to be used in the data analysis of rapidly rotating Kerr-type black-hole binaries with the ground-based detectors LIGO, Virgo, GEO 600 and TAMA300, and the space-based detector LISA.