English

A consequence of the gravitational self-force for circular orbits of the Schwarzschild geometry

General Relativity and Quantum Cosmology 2010-05-12 v1

Abstract

A small mass \mu in orbit about a much more massive black hole M moves along a world line that deviates from a geodesic of the black hole geometry by O(\mu/M). This deviation is said to be caused by the gravitational self-force of the metric perturbation h_{ab} from \mu. For circular orbits about a non-rotating black hole we numerically calculate the O(\mu/M) effects upon the orbital frequency and upon the rate of passage of proper time on the worldline. These two effects are independent of the choice of gauge for h_{ab} and are observable in principle. For distant orbits, our numerical results agree with a post-Newtonian analysis including terms of order (v/c)^6.

Keywords

Cite

@article{arxiv.0804.3529,
  title  = {A consequence of the gravitational self-force for circular orbits of the Schwarzschild geometry},
  author = {Steven Detweiler},
  journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:0804.3529},
  year   = {2010}
}

Comments

15 pages, 2 figures, 1 table