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Gravity Waves, Chaos, and Spinning Compact Binaries

Janna Levin
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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.

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Janna Levin. 2000-05-05. Gravity Waves, Chaos, and Spinning Compact Binaries. https://doi.org/10.1103/physrevlett.84.3515

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