CENTRA Seminar - Scattering of scalar, electromagnetic and gravitational waves from binary systems - 28 fevereiro 2019

Lorenzo Annulli

 

The direct detection of gravitational waves crowns decades of efforts in the modelling of sources and of increasing detectors’ sensitivity. Previously brushed-aside questions on environmental or other systematic effects in the generation and propagation of gravitational waves are now begging for a systematic treatment. Environmental effects, such as accretion disks, nearby stars, electric or magnetic fields, a cosmological constant or even dark matter, all can possible contribute to blur what is otherwise a clear picture of compact binaries. Along these lines, we studied  the effect of an impinging gravitational wave on a gravitational-bound binary (arXiv:1809.05108 [gr-qc]). This process is the gravitational counterpart of the well-known electromagnetic scattering phenomena. Notably, the ratio between the gravitational scattered-wave amplitude and the incident wave can bring this into the realm of future gravitational-wave observatories.