2002/06/30 by Zachary E. Wardell · 1 citation
Earth and Planetary Sciences · Engineering · Physics and Astronomy · #Geophysics and Gravity Measurements #Pulsars and Gravitational Waves Research #Spacecraft Dynamics and Control #astro-ph #gr-qc
paper · pdf · doi:10.1046/j.1365-8711.2002.05498.x
16 pages, 3 Postscript figures, to appear in MNRAS
openalex publication_date 2002/07/01 · arxiv created 2002/07/02 · arxiv updated 2009/11/30 · openalex created_date 2016/06/24 · openalex updated_date 2026/07/30
A model of three-body motion is developed which includes the effects of gravitational radiation reaction. The radiation reaction due to the emission of gravitational waves is the only post-Newtonian effect that is included here. For simplicity, all of the motion is taken to be planar. Two of the masses are viewed as a binary system, and the third mass, whose motion will be a fixed orbit around the centre-of-mass of the binary system, is viewed as a perturbation. This model aims to describe the motion of a relativistic binary pulsar that is perturbed by a third mass. Numerical integration of this simplified model reveals that, given the right initial conditions and parameters, one can see resonances. These (m, n) resonances are defined by the resonance condition, mω=2nΩ, where m and n are relatively prime integers, and ω and Ω are the angular frequencies of the binary orbit and third mass orbit (around the centre-of-mass of the binary), respectively. The resonance condition consequently fixes a value for the semimajor axis of the binary orbit for the duration of the resonance; therefore the binary energy remains constant on average, while its angular momentum changes during the resonance.