2024/11/06 by B. G. Patterson, Patterson, Ben G., Sharon Mary Tomson +3 · 3 citations
Earth and Planetary Sciences · Physics and Astronomy · #Cosmology and Gravitation Theories #FOS: Physical sciences #General Relativity and Quantum Cosmology (gr-qc) #Geophysics and Gravity Measurements #High Energy Astrophysical Phenomena (astro-ph.HE) #Pulsars and Gravitational Waves Research
paper · pdf · doi:10.48550/arxiv.2411.04187
openalex publication_date 2024/11/06 · openalex created_date 2025/10/10 · openalex updated_date 2026/07/28
We show that the gravitational waveform emitted by a binary on an eccentric orbit can be naturally decomposed into a series of harmonics. The frequencies of these harmonics depend upon the radial frequency, fr, determined by the time to return to apoapsis, and the azimuthal frequency, fϕ, determined by the time to complete one orbit relative to a fixed axis. These frequencies differ due to periapsis advance. Restricting to the (2, 2) multipole, we find that the frequencies can be expressed as f = 2 fϕ + k fr. We introduce a straightforward method of generating these harmonics and show that the majority of the signal power is contained in the k= -1, 0, 1 harmonics for moderate eccentricities. We demonstrate that by filtering these three leading harmonics, we are able to obtain a good estimate of the orbital eccentricity from their relative amplitudes.