Gravity Waves, Chaos, and Spinning Compact Binaries

TL;DR

Spinning compact binaries exhibit chaos in their evolution, leading to unpredictable gravitational waveforms that challenge the accuracy of theoretical templates for gravitational wave detection.

Contribution

This paper demonstrates that chaos occurs in spinning compact binaries within the Post-Newtonian framework, highlighting a fundamental unpredictability in gravitational wave signals.

Findings

Chaotic behavior identified in spinning binary systems.

Unpredictability of gravitational waveforms during coalescence.

Implications for gravitational wave data analysis and template matching.

Abstract

Spinning compact binaries are shown to be chaotic in the Post-Newtonian expansion of the two body system. Chaos by definition is the extreme sensitivity to initial conditions and a consequent inability to predict the outcome of the evolution. As a result, the spinning pair will have unpredictable gravitational waveforms during coalescence. This poses a challenge to future gravity wave observatories which rely on a match between the data and a theoretical template.