Comparing Electromagnetic and Gravitational Radiation
2015
While the subject of Electromagnetism is more than two centuries old now, General Relativity (GR) is
just about to reach its centenary. There are similarities between the phenomenon of the long studied
subject of Classical Electromagnetic Radiation and relatively recent Gravitational Radiation. Both the
theories are relativistically covariant, yet they have remarkable difference when looked into deeply. Just
like the classical electron spews out radiation and finally collapses into the central atomic nucleus in a
classical atom, an accelerating mass emits Gravitational Waves (GWs) which carry energy away from
the system. However, the fact that geometry of spacetime is affected by Gravity makes GWs richer. Our
aim here is to compare the two, apparently similar, but very different cases of radiation. Electromagnetic
waves are caused by the dynamics of electric and magnetic fields due to charges and are determined by a
vector - the four potential, while gravitational waves are wave like solution of spacetime and is described
by a tensor - the metric, the ruler with which one measures length in space-time. The primary focus of
this project is to study the formalism required to deal with radiating systems and apply the results to
determine the decay of the constants of motion for motion in a Kepler orbit. The techniques are also
applied to a special case of motion in a point electric-dipole potential. The stable orbit is studied and
the effects of radiation is looked into. This is expected to be the only new result in the report.
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