Gravitational radiation from compact binary systems: gravitational waveforms and energy loss to second post-Newtonian order

TL;DR

This paper derives second post-Newtonian order gravitational waveforms and energy flux for compact binary systems, improving accuracy and addressing previous computational issues, with explicit formulas for various orbital configurations.

Contribution

It introduces a novel method for calculating gravitational radiation to second post-Newtonian order, resolving previous computational issues and providing explicit waveform and energy flux formulas.

Findings

Derived gravitational waveforms and energy flux to second post-Newtonian order.

Validated the method against recent post-Minkowskian results.

Extended formalism to include finite-size and spin effects.

Abstract

We derive the gravitational waveform and gravitational-wave energy flux generated by a binary star system of compact objects (neutron stars or black holes), accurate through second post-Newtonian order ($O[(v/c)^4] \sim O[(Gm/rc^2)^2]$) beyond the lowest-order quadrupole approximation. We cast the Einstein equations into the form of a flat-spacetime wave equation together with a harmonic gauge condition, and solve it formally as a retarded integral over the past null cone of the chosen field point. The part of this integral that involves the matter sources and the near-zone gravitational field is evaluated in terms of multipole moments using standard techniques; the remainder of the retarded integral, extending over the radiation zone, is evaluated in a novel way. The result is a manifestly convergent and finite procedure for calculating gravitational radiation to arbitrary orders in a post-Newtonian expansion. Through second post-Newtonian order, the radiation is also shown to propagate toward the observer along true null rays of the asymptotically Schwarzschild spacetime, despite having been derived using flat spacetime wave equations. The method cures defects that plagued previous ``brute- force'' slow-motion approaches to the generation of gravitational radiation, and yields results that agree perfectly with those recently obtained by a mixed post-Minkowskian post-Newtonian method. We display explicit formulae for the gravitational waveform and the energy flux for two-body systems, both in arbitrary orbits and in circular orbits. In an appendix, we extend the formalism to bodies with finite spatial extent, and derive the spin corrections to the waveform and energy loss.