Radiation Reaction on Moving Particles in General Relativity

Eirini Messaritaki

Home/Archive/arXiv

arXiv · gr-qc/0308047

Radiation Reaction on Moving Particles in General Relativity

Eirini Messaritaki

View original source ↗Read source document ↗Export metadata ↓

Abstract

A particle in the vicinity of a Schwarzschild black hole is known to trace a geodesic of the Schwarzschild background, to a first approximation. If the interaction of the particle with its own field (scalar, electromagnetic or gravitational) is taken into account, the path is no longer a background geodesic and the self-force that the particle experiences needs to be taken into consideration. In this dissertation, a recently proposed method for the calculation of the self-force is implemented. According to this method the self-force comes from the interaction of the particle with the Regular-Remainder scalar field, electromagnetic potential or metric perturbation. That Regular-Remainder is obtained by subtracting the Singular part (which exerts no force) from the retarded scalar field, electromagnetic potential of metric perturbation generated by the moving particle. First, the Singular scalar fields, electromagnetic potentials and metric perturbations are calculated for different sources moving in a Schwarzschild background. For that, the Thorne-Hartle-Zhang coordinates in the vicinity of the moving source are used. Then a mode-sum regularization method initially proposed for the direct scalar field is followed, and the regularization parameters for the singular part of the scalar field and for the first radial derivative of the singular part of the self-force are calculated. Also, the numerical calculation of the retarded scalar field for a particle moving on a circular geodesic in a Schwarzschild spacetime is presented. Finally, the self-force for a scalar particle moving on a circular Schwarzschild orbit is calculated and some results about the effects of the self-force on the orbital frequency of the circular orbit are presented.

Explore related subjects

gr-qc

Keep this discovery

Explore connections, maps & timelines

BibTeX RIS

Eirini Messaritaki. 2003-08-14. Radiation Reaction on Moving Particles in General Relativity. https://arxiv.org/abs/gr-qc/0308047

Cite the original work for its findings. Save a collection to share your selection of sources.

KEEP EXPLORING

Related papers

arXiv2026

On spherically symmetric Berwald vacuum solutions in Finsler gravity

Berwald-Finsler spacetimes are Finsler spacetimes that are closest to pseudo-Riemannian geometry, as their canonical nonlinear connection defines an affine connection on spacetime. In this paper, we find the first exact, non-Ricci flat, $SO(3)$-symmetric Berwald solutions to the Finsler gravity vacuum equation. To this aim, we first select from all spherically symmetric Berwald spacetimes, the only class that admits flat Finsler spacetime structures, making it particularly suitable for future investigations of asymptotic flatness. Then, for this class, we completely solve the Finsler gravity vacuum equation, and find three families of solutions. In particular, we show that in Finsler geometry there exist $SO(3)$-symmetric, vacuum solutions that are not Ricci-flat. These solutions are promising candidates to model the gravitational field around compact objects, beyond their Riemannian description.

gr-qc↗

arXiv2026

Red noise and evolving signals: a complete frequentist approach to supermassive black hole binary searches with pulsar timing arrays

Searches for gravitational waves (GWs) from isolated supermassive black hole binaries (SMBHBs) in pulsar timing array (PTA) data require simultaneous estimation of signal and noise parameters, so the dimensionality of the fit scales with the number of observed pulsars. This computational difficulty is exacerbated when source evolution from GW emission is included, since retaining both Earth and pulsar terms introduces the unknown pulsar distances. Existing frequentist methods such as the $\mathcal{F}$-statistic are restricted to non-evolving sources. In addition, they often rely on a noise covariance estimated from the same data and then held fixed during the signal search, which can bias parameter estimates. We present a Generalized Likelihood Ratio Test and the associated $\mathcal{T}$-statistic that overcomes the aforementioned limitations. This formulation extends earlier work in which the dimensionality of the fitting problem was drastically reduced by semi-analytical maximization of the likelihood over the pulsar phase parameters, followed by efficient global optimization over the remaining parameters using Particle Swarm Optimization. Our simulations demonstrate that for an evolving SMBHB signal with chirp mass $\mathcal{M}=10^{9.2} M_\odot$ and signal-to-noise ratio $20$, this detection statistic achieves a $100\%$ detection probability at a false-alarm probability of $0.06$ in a 30-pulsar timing array, which is characterized by a $100 \mathrm{ns}$ root-mean-square white noise residual and pulsar-specific red noise. For the 30-pulsar timing array at signal-to-noise ratio $10$ and false-alarm probability $0.06$, $\mathcal{T}$ detects $99/100$ realizations, outperforming the $\mathcal{F}_p$ statistic evaluated with the $H_0$-fitted covariance, which detects $71/100$ realizations.

gr-qc↗

arXiv2026

Universality in the Transition from Inspiral to Plunge for Extreme-Mass-Ratio-Inspirals: High-Accuracy Analytic Solutions and Catastrophe Theory

We revisit the transition from inspiral to plunge for extreme mass-ratio inspirals on quasi-circular, inclined orbits in Kerr spacetime from the perspective of catastrophe theory. Our goal is to uncover the mathematical structures underlying the universality of the transition dynamics, which remains governed by the same Painlevé I differential equation as for equatorial inspirals despite the additional complexity. We first analyze the solution of the Painlevé I equation selected by the physical boundary conditions of slowly evolving quasi-circular inspiral at early times. We argue that these conditions uniquely select the tritronquée solution of Painlevé I. We then compare existing high-accuracy analytic approximations of the tritronquée solution with direct numerical integrations of the Painlevé I equation, finding comparable accuracy and improved stability under differentiation and integration for the analytic solution. In the second part of this work, we show that the equilibrium structure of the Kerr radial effective potential admits a natural interpretation in terms of catastrophe theory. Equatorial orbits are associated with the fold catastrophe, while inclined orbits are described by the cusp catastrophe. In both cases, the transition to plunge corresponds to slow evolution across fold lines of the catastrophe manifold, providing a geometric explanation for the universal appearance of the Painlevé I equation in the transition dynamics.

gr-qc↗