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Updated: Jul 31, 2026

Magnetically Induced Rotating Rayleigh-Taylor Instability
Published on: March 3, 2017
Gravity waves, chaos, and spinning compact binaries
1DAMTP, Cambridge University, Wilberforce Road, Cambridge CB3 0WA, United Kingdom and and Astronomy Centre, University of Sussex, Brighton BN1 9QJ, United Kingdom.
Abstract:
Spinning compact binaries are shown to be chaotic in the post-Newtonian expansion of the two-body system. Chaos by definition is the extreme sensitivity to initial conditions and a consequent inability to predict the outcome of the evolution. As a result, the spinning pair will have unpredictable gravitational waveforms during coalescence. This poses a challenge to future gravity wave observatories which rely on a match between the data and a theoretical template.
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