Studies on Propagation of Gravitational Waves in Vaidya Spacetime

Ghosh, Suprovo (2019) Studies on Propagation of Gravitational Waves in Vaidya Spacetime. Masters thesis, Indian Institute Of Science Education And Research Kolkata.

PDF (MS dissertation of Suprovo Ghosh (14MS153)) 14MS153.pdf - Submitted Version Restricted to Repository staff only Download (601kB)

Abstract

The astronomical objects such as stars, supernovae, quasars emit radiation which makes the surrounding spacetime non-empty. Here, we consider the propagation of gravitational waves in Vaidya spacetime which describes the spacetime around a radiating star. After deriving the general gravitational wave equation in an arbitrary curved background, we decompose the perturbation tensor in a suitable gauge using Vaidya metric as background. Using the self-similar model for the mass function of the radiating star, we solve the gravitational wave equation to find a class of analytic solutions. We show that the angular parts of the gravitational waves are spin-weighted spherical harmonics with spin ±2 as expected. We also find that the polarisation phases are not affected by the mass and radiation parameters of the Vaidya spacetime. To understand of the effect of curvature and radiation on the propagation of gravitational waves, a comparative study with Schwarzschild background is performed.

Actions (login required)

View Item