Second post-Newtonian radiative evolution of the relative orientations of angular momenta in spinning compact binaries

Abstract

The radiative evolution of the relative orientations of the spin and orbital angular momentum vectors ${\bf S}_{{\bf 1}}, {\bf S}_{{\bf 2}}$ and ${\bf L}$, characterizing a binary system on eccentric orbit is studied up to the second post-Newtonian order. As an intermediate result, all Burke-Thorne type instantaneous radiative changes in the spins are shown to average out over a radial period. It is proved that spin-orbit and spin-spin terms contribute to the radiative angular evolution equations, while Newtonian, first and second post-Newtonian terms together with the leading order tail terms do not. In complement to the spin-orbit contribution, given earlier, the spin-spin contribution is computed and split into two-body and self-interaction parts. The latter provide the second post-Newtonian order corrections to the 3/2 order Lense-Thirring description.