Gravitational waves from non-circular orbits

Abstract

The study of gravitational waves has been a rapidly growing field, and has been dubbed a new era of astronomy. This thesis examines and confirms the frameworks found by previous research to calculate, among others, the strain and power of gravitational waves for circular orbits, and expands this to elliptical orbits and hyperbolic encounters, using general relativity. It is found that the elliptical and circular cases are equivalent up to a factor which depends only on the orbital eccentricity. Furthermore, the case of hyperbolic encounters is examined, and an already detectable hyperbolic encounter is discussed. Lastly, a more accessible derivation Einstein's quadrupole formula is given.