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Published October 15, 2005 | public
Journal Article Open

Semirelativistic approximation to gravitational radiation from encounters with nonspinning black holes

Abstract

The capture of compact bodies by black holes in galactic nuclei is an important prospective source for low frequency gravitational wave detectors, such as the planned Laser Interferometer Space Antenna. This paper calculates, using a semirelativistic approximation, the total energy and angular momentum lost to gravitational radiation by compact bodies on very high eccentricity orbits passing close to a supermassive, nonspinning black hole; these quantities determine the characteristics of the orbital evolution necessary to estimate the capture rate. The semirelativistic approximation improves upon treatments which use orbits at Newtonian order and quadrupolar radiation emission, and matches well onto accurate Teukolsky simulations for low eccentricity orbits. Formulas are presented for the semirelativistic energy and angular momentum fluxes as a function of general orbital parameters.

Additional Information

©2005 The American Physical Society. Received 11 August 2005; published 13 October 2005. We would like to thank E. Sterl Phinney for initially suggesting this problem, and the members of the TAPIR group at Caltech for helpful discussions during the completion of this work. We also thank Kostas Glampedakis and Stanislav Babak for several helpful suggestions. S.L.L. and J.R.G. thank the Aspen Centre for Physics for their hospitality while the manuscript was being finished. This work was supported in part by NASA Grants No. NAG5-12834 (J.R.G., D.J.K.) and No. NAG5-10707 (J.R.G.). S.L.L. acknowledges support at Penn State from the Center for Gravitational Wave Physics, funded by the NSF under cooperative Agreement No. PHY 01-14375, as well as support from Caltech under LISA Contract No. PO 1217163.

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Created:
August 22, 2023
Modified:
October 13, 2023