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J.A. Faber, J. Manor, F.A. Rasio (M.I.T.)
We present results from our new Post-Newtonian (PN) Smoothed Particle Hydrodynamics (SPH) code, which has been used to study the coalescence of binary neutron star (NS) systems. The Lagrangian particle-based code incorporates consistently all lowest-order (1PN) relativistic effects, as well as gravitational radiation reaction, the lowest-order dissipative term in general relativity. We compare calculations of initially synchronized and nonsynchronized binaries, with and without 1PN effects, for NS with stiff equations of state, modeled as polytropes with \Gamma=2-3, and for a range of binary mass ratios. We find that 1PN effects can play a major role in the coalescence, accelerating the final inspiral and causing a characteristic modulation of the gravitational wave signal at late times.
This work was partially supported by the National Computational Science Alliance under grant AST980014N and utilized the NCSA SGI/CRAY Origin2000.
The author(s) of this abstract have provided an email address for comments about the abstract: jfaber@mit.edu