| Description |
This paper discusses some apparent difficulties and paradoxes in connection with the famous quadrupole formula for gravitational radiation from slow motion sources. The paper consists of two parts. In the first part, the quadrupole formula is derived and a nonlinear contribution to the radiation field, which is neglected by standard treatments, is identified and discussed. This contribution can be interpreted as a nonlinear correction to the quadrupole field arising from the fact that the gravitational radiation carries energy and momentum, and thus itself acts as a source of the gravitational field. A crude approximation of the magnitude of this nonlinear contribution suggests that the contribution is important for a large class of realistic quasiperiodic sources with a sufficiently long history of radiation. However, a more careful analysis, presented in the body of the paper, shows that the nonlinear contribution is in fact negligible for all realistic sources of gravitational radiation. |
