The interaction of gravitational waves with strongly magnetized plasmas

Abstract

We study the interaction of a gravitational wave (GW) with a plasma that is strongly magnetized. The GW is considered a small disturbance, and the plasma is modeled by the general relativistic analogue of the induction equation of ideal MHD and the single fluid equations. The equations are derived without neglecting any of the non-linear interaction terms, and the non-linear equations are integrated numerically. We find that for strong magnetic fields of the order of $10^{15}$G the GW excites electromagnetic plasma waves very close to the magnetosonic mode. The magnetic and electric field oscillations have very high amplitude, and a large amount of energy is absorbed from the GW by the electromagnetic oscillations, of the order of $10^{23}$erg/cm${}^3$ in the case presented here. The absorbed energy is proportional to $B_0^2$, with $B_0$ the background magnetic field. The energization of the plasma takes place on fast time scales of the order of milliseconds. The amount of absorbed energy is comparable to the energies emitted in the most energetic astrophysical events, such as giant flares on magnetars and possibly even short Gamma ray bursts (GRB), for which the mechanism analyzed here also has the fast time-scales required.

arXiv comment5 pages, 7 figures, Eq. (7) and corresponding text is modified

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• Parametric amplification of electromagnetic plasma waves in resonance with a dispersive background gravitational wave
• Self-consistent interaction of linear gravitational and electromagnetic waves in non-magnetized plasma
• Magnetohydrodynamic waves excited by a coupling between gravitational waves and a strongly magnetized plasma in binaries of neutron stars
• Quantum mechanics of a charged particle in a background magnetic field interacting with linearized gravitational waves
• Interaction of a circularly polarised gravitational wave with a charged particle in a static magnetic background
• The influence of strong field vacuum polarization on gravitational-electromagnetic wave interaction