Quasi-circular Binary Inspiral

This is an animation of the gravitational waves produced by a two stars in orbit around each other (as generated by my code). The waves are seen in a reference frame that rotates with the same angular velocity as the stars, and so the waves at first appear to be constant. For example, in a reference frame that corotated with the Earth and the Sun, both the Earth and the Sun would appear to be at rest, while Mercury and Venus would appear to keep orbiting in the same direction, but more slowly, and Mars and the outer planets would appear to orbit in the opposite direction. Actually this isn't quite right, as the Earth's orbit is slightly eccentric, and so in the corotating reference frame it would appear to rock back and forth radially from .983 to 1.017 AU over the course of a year. In this simulation the two stars are equal mass and in a quasi-circular orbit. Quasi-circular because the gravitational waves take energy out of the system, causing the stars to spiral in towards each other, slowly at first, and much more quickly at the end.

The plot shows a top down view of the gravitational field strength on an equitorial slice. The plot of the field has been modified by dividing through by the Newtonian gravitational field solution, which both removes the deep potential wells centered on the two stars (which would otherwise dominate the color scale), and gives the waves a constant amplitude, where in reality they have a 1/r envelope.

Category:

People & Blogs

Tags:

• Binary
• Inspiral
• Nordstrom
• Gravitational
• Wave
• Corotating

[KGSProductions]

Dude! that scared me!