Gravitational Wave Signals from Chaotic System: A Point Mass with A Disk

Abstract

We study gravitational waves from a particle moving around a system of a point mass with a disk in Newtonian gravitational theory. A particle motion in this system can be chaotic when the gravitational contribution from a surface density of a disk is comparable with that from a point mass. In such an orbit, we sometimes find that there appears a phase of the orbit in which particle motion becomes to be nearly regular (the so-called ``stagnant motion'') for a finite time interval between more strongly chaotic phases. To study how these different chaotic behaviours affect on observation of gravitational waves, we investigate a correlation of the particle motion and the waves. We find that such a difference in chaotic motions reflects on the wave forms and energy spectra. The character of the waves in the stagnant motion is quite different from that either in a regular motion or in a more strongly chaotic motion. This suggests that we may make a distinction between different chaotic behaviours of the orbit via the gravitational waves.