Abstract
We develop a unified formalism for describing the interaction of gravitational waves with matter that clearly separates the effects of general relativity from those due to interactions in the matter. Using it, we derive a general expression for the dispersion of gravitational waves in matter in terms of correlation functions for the matter in flat spacetime. The self energy of a gravitational wave is shown to have contributions analogous to the paramagnetic and diamagnetic contributions to the self energy of an electromagnetic wave. We apply the formalism to some simple systems: free particles, an interacting scalar field, and a fermionic superfluid.
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