arXiv subjects
Publications and source records attributed to Gerhard Schäfer.
A previously found momentum-dependent regularization ambiguity in the third post-Newtonian two point-mass Arnowitt-Deser-Misner Hamiltonian is shown to be uniquely determined by requiring global Poincaré invariance. The phase-space generators realizing the Poincaré algebra are explicitly constructed.
The paper gives an introduction to the gravitational radiation theory of isolated sources and to the propagation properties of light rays in radiative gravitational fields. It presents a theoretical study of the generation, propagation, back-reaction, and detection of gravitational waves from astrophysical sources. After reviewing the various quadrupole-moment laws for gravitational radiation in the Newtonian approximation, we show how to incorporate post-Newtonian corrections into the source multipole moments, the radiative multipole moments at infinity, and the back-reaction potentials. We further treat the light propagation in the linearized gravitational field outside a gravitational wave emitting source. The effects of time delay, bending of light, and moving source frequency shift are presented in terms of the gravitational lens potential. Time delay results are applied in the description of the procedure of the detection of gravitational waves.
The orbital dynamics of the binary point-mass systems is ambiguous at the third post-Newtonian order of approximation. The static ambiguity is known to be related to the difference between the Brill-Lindquist solution and the Misner-Lindquist solution of the time-symmetric conformally flat initial value problem for binary black holes. The kinetic ambiguity is noticed to violate in general the standard relation between the center-of-mass velocity and the total linear momentum as demanded by global Lorentz invariance.
We extract all the invariants (i.e. all the functions which do not depend on the choice of phase-space coordinates) of the dynamics of two point-masses, at the third post-Newtonian (3PN) approximation of general relativity. We start by showing how a contact transformation can be used to reduce the 3PN higher-order Hamiltonian derived by Jaranowski and Schäfer to an ordinary Hamiltonian. The dynamical invariants for general orbits (considered in the center-of-mass frame) are then extracted by computing the radial action variable $\oint{p_r}dr$ as a function of energy and angular momentum. The important case of circular orbits is given special consideration. We discuss in detail the plausible ranges of values of the two quantities $\oms$, $\omk$ which parametrize the existence of ambiguities in the regularization of some of the divergent integrals making up the Hamiltonian. The physical applications of the invariant functions derived here (e.g. to the determination of the location of the last stable circular orbit) are left to subsequent work.
The Brill-Lindquist time-symmetric initial-value solution for two uncharged black holes is rederived using the Hamiltonian constraint equation with Dirac delta distributions as a source for the binary black-hole field. The bare masses of the Brill-Lindquist black holes are introduced in a way which is applied, after straightforward modification, to the Misner-Linquist binary black-hole solution.
Post-Newtonian expansions of the Brill-Lindquist and Misner-Lindquist solutions of the time-symmetric two-black-hole initial value problem are derived. The static Hamiltonians related to the expanded solutions, after identifying the bare masses in both solutions, are found to differ from each other at the third post-Newtonian approximation. By shifting the position variables of the black holes the post-Newtonian expansions of the three metrics can be made to coincide up to the fifth post-Newtonian order resulting in identical static Hamiltonians up the third post-Newtonian approximation. The calculations shed light on previously performed binary point-mass calculations at the third post-Newtonian approximation.
The effect of the recently obtained 2nd post-Newtonian corrections on the accuracy of estimation of parameters of the gravitational-wave signal from a coalescing binary is investigated. It is shown that addition of this correction degrades considerably the accuracy of determination of individual masses of the members of the binary. However the chirp mass and the time parameter in the signal is still determined to a very good accuracy. The possibility of estimation of effects of other theories of gravity is investigated. The performance of the Newtonian filter is investigated and it is compared with performance of post-Newtonian search templates introduced recently. It is shown that both search templates can extract accurately useful information about the binary.