Numerical solutions of the complete two-body system in QUMOND

Abstract

Due to the non-linearity of the QUMOND field equations, in the modelling of binaries so far the two-body system is replaced by an effective one-body system, where the central particle contains the total mass of both binary components and is orbited by a massless test particle. In this work, the discrepancy between the effective one-body treatment and the complete two-body solution in QUMOND is quantified. Particles are treated as limits of Dirac sequences. Then, the QUMOND contribution to the total kinematical acceleration of a particle is expressed as a Green's integral which is calculated numerically. In the non-linear transition regime the kinematical acceleration of the effective one-body system with a total mass of 2 Msun is up to a factor of 1.44 higher than the Newtonian acceleration, whereas the acceleration is only boosted by a factor of 1.2--1.3 in the two-body system in the case of the simple transition function.