Gravitational radiation reaction along general orbits in the effective one-body formalism

Abstract

We derive the gravitational radiation-reaction force modifying the Effective One Body (EOB) description of the conservative dynamics of binary systems. Our result is applicable to general orbits (elliptic or hyperbolic) and keeps terms of fractional second post-Newtonian order (but does not include tail effects). Our derivation of radiation-reaction is based on a new way of requiring energy and angular momentum balance. We give several applications of our results, notably the value of the (minimal) "Schott" contribution to the energy, the radial component of the radiation-reaction force, and the radiative contribution to the angle of scattering during hyperbolic encounters. We present also new results about the conservative relativistic dynamics of hyperbolic motions.