GRAVITATIONAL RADIATION FROM TRIPLE STAR SYSTEMS

Gravitational radiation from nonaxisymmetric instability in a rotating star.

We present the first calculations of the gravitational radiation produced by nonaxisymmetric dynamical instability in a rapidly rotating compact star. The star deforms into a bar shape, shedding ∼ 4% of its mass and ∼ 17% of its angular momentum. The gravitational radiation is calculated in the quadrupole approximation. For a mass M ∼ 1.4 M⊙ and radius R ∼ 10 km, the gravitational waves have fr...

Gravitational Radiation from Mergers of Black Hole–neutron Star Binaries

Angular momentum loss via the emission of gravitational waves must eventually drive compact binaries containing black holes and/or neutron stars to coalesce. The resulting events are primary candidate sources for detectors such as VIRGO and LIGO. We present calculations of gravitational radiation waveforms and luminosities for the coalescence of a black hole-neutron star binary, performed in th...

Secular Evolution of Hierarchical Triple Star Systems

We derive octupole-level secular perturbation equations for hierarchical triple systems, using classical Hamiltonian perturbation techniques. Our equations describe the secular evolution of the orbital eccentricities and inclinations over timescales long compared to the orbital periods. By extending previous work done to leading (quadrupole) order to octupole level (i.e., including terms of ord...

Gravitational Lensing of Gravitational Waves from Merging Neutron Star Binaries.

We discuss the gravitational lensing of gravitational waves from merging neutron star binaries, in the context of advanced LIGO type gravitational wave detectors. We consider properties of the expected observational data with cut on the signal-to-noise ratio ρ, i.e., ρ > ρ0. An advanced LIGO should see unlensed inspiral events with a redshift distribution with cut-off at a redshift zmax < 1 for...

Gravitational radiation from relativistic sources