The mass quadrupole moment of compact binary systems at the fourth post-Newtonian order

Abstract

The mass-type quadrupole moment of inspiralling compact binaries (without spins) is computed at the fourth post-Newtonian (4PN) approximation of general relativity. The multipole moments are defined by matching between the field in the exterior zone of the matter system and the PN field in the near zone, following the multipolar-post-Minkowskian (MPM)-PN formalism. The matching implies a specific regularization for handling infra-red (IR) divergences of the multipole moments at infinity, based on the Hadamard finite part procedure. On the other hand, the calculation entails ultra-violet (UV) divergences due to the modelling of compact objects by delta-functions, that are treated with dimensional regularization (DR). In future work we intend to systematically study the IR divergences by means of dimensional regularization as well. Our result constitutes an important step in the goal of obtaining the gravitational wave templates of inspiralling compact binary systems with 4PN/4.5PN accuracy.