English

Quadrupolar bremsstrahlung waveform at the third-and-a-half post-Newtonian accuracy

General Relativity and Quantum Cosmology 2026-04-24 v1

Abstract

We study the quadrupolar part of the gravitational waveform hijh_{ij} (encoded in the helicity-(2)-2) radiative quadrupole moment U2=12!mˉimˉjUijR4GmˉimˉjhijWU_2 = \frac{1}{2!} \bar m^{i} \bar m^{j } U_{i j} \in\frac{R}{4G} \bar m^{i} \bar m^{j } h_{i j}\equiv W ) emitted during the scattering of two masses. Working within the Multipolar Post-Minkowskian (MPM) formalism, we compute the time-domain value of U2U_2 at the third-and-a-half post-Newtonian (3.5PN) accuracy by using the 3.5PN radiation-reacted quasi-Keplerian representation of the hyperbolic motion. We then explicitly evaluate the {\it frequency-domain} value of U2U_2 up to the 2-loop level, i.e. O(G4) O(G^4) contributions to hij(ω,θ,ϕ)h_{ij}(\omega, \theta,\phi), corresponding to O(G3)O(G^3) contributions to U^2(ω,θ,ϕ)\hat U_2(\omega, \theta,\phi). The nonlinear memory contribution to the waveform in the center-of-mass frame is computed too, and checked against the soft-limit of the waveform. The 1-loop truncation of our 3.5PN frequency-domain MPM waveform is found to agree with corresponding existing Effective Field Theory (EFT) results when subtracting the dipolar part of the Veneziano-Vilkovisky supertranslation connecting the MPM and EFT Bondi-Metzner-Sachs (BMS) frames.

Keywords

Cite

@article{arxiv.2604.21522,
  title  = {Quadrupolar bremsstrahlung waveform at the third-and-a-half post-Newtonian accuracy},
  author = {Donato Bini and Thibault Damour and Andrea Geralico},
  journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:2604.21522},
  year   = {2026}
}

Comments

31 pages

R2 v1 2026-07-01T12:32:14.573Z