Gravitational waves without general relativity: A tutorial

Abstract

This tutorial leads the reader through the details of calculating the properties of gravitational waves from orbiting binaries, such as two orbiting black holes. Using analogies with electromagnetic radiation, the tutorial presents a calculation that produces the same dependence on the masses of the orbiting objects, the orbital frequency, and the mass separation as does the linear version of General Relativity (GR). However, the calculation yields polarization, angular distributions, and overall power results that differ from those of GR. Nevertheless, the calculation produces waveforms that are nearly identical to the pre-binary-merger portions of the signals observed by the Laser Interferometer Gravitational-Wave Observatory (LIGO-Virgo) collaboration. The tutorial should be easily understandable by students who have taken a standard upper-level undergraduate course in electromagnetism.

Version 2 of this tutorial adds the integrated orbital phase method of describing chirp signals and a detailed derivation of the interaction of a vector gravitational wave with a LIGO-Virgo interferometer detector

References in corpus (7)

• GW170817: Observation of Gravitational Waves from a Binary Neutron Star Inspiral
• GW170814: A Three-Detector Observation of Gravitational Waves from a Binary Black Hole Coalescence
• Timing Measurements of the Relativistic Binary Pulsar PSR B1913+16
• Probing non-tensorial polarizations of stochastic gravitational-wave backgrounds with ground-based laser interferometers
• The basic physics of the binary black hole merger GW150914
• Detecting Beyond-Einstein Polarizations of Continuous Gravitational Waves
• Hands-on Gravitational Wave Astronomy: Extracting astrophysical information from simulated signals

Cited by in corpus (6)

• Forecasts on interacting dark energy with standard sirens
• An estimate of the stochastic gravitational wave background from the MassiveBlackII simulation
• GW170814: Gravitational wave polarization analysis
• An Acoustical Analogue of a Galactic-scale Gravitational-Wave Detector
• An introduction to gravitational waves through electrodynamics: a quadrupole comparison
• Physical effects of gravitational waves: pedagogical examples