Gravitational Radiation from Relativistic Systems

Abstract

Gravitational radiation is calculated for two selected systems, a pair of masses interacting through scalar or vector fields, to illustrate the behavior of gravitational radiation when the emitting bodies have arbitrarily large velocities. Explicit expressions are obtained for the radiation potentials and radiated power, which can be used for any orbit or trajectory. Although the radiation exhibits the same relativistic peaking as is found in electromagnetism, the amount of energy radiated is found to depend critically on the kind of stresses binding the system. Numerical calculations are done for the cases of circular orbits and extreme hyperbolic trajectories, in order to show the transition from the non-relativistic to extreme relativistic limits. The extreme hyperbolic case also allows comparison with previous results obtained for the gravitational deflection of a small mass in an unbound trajectory.