"Gravity wave signatures from compact binary systems" (Students Lectures):
I will survey our study of the 2-body problem in general relativity. We focus on two analytical limits: the extreme mass ratio (EMR) limit, in which one of the objects is much larger than the second, and the post-Newtonian (PN) limit, in which the characteristic velocities are non-relativistic. In the EMR limit, we compute the late time gravitational waveform resulting from the plunge of a small object into a large black hole (BH) as a sum over the BH's quasinormal modes. In particular, for near-extremal BHs, a full analytical solution for the waveform is available due to enhanced near-horizon symmetry. In the PN limit, we formulate an effective field theory describing radiation and radiation-reaction effects within a unified action principle and generalize it to arbitrary spacetime dimensions. Our results are relevant for gravitational wave detection experiments