Gravitational quadrupole[edit]
The mass quadrupole is analogous to the electric charge quadrupole, where the charge density is simply replaced by the mass density and a negative sign is added because the masses are always positive and the force is attractive. The gravitational potential is then expressed as:
For example, because the Earth is rotating, it is oblate (flattened at the poles). This gives it a nonzero quadrupole moment. While the contribution to the Earth's gravitational field from this quadrupole is extremely important for artificial satellites close to Earth, it is less important for the Moon because the term falls quickly.
The mass quadrupole moment is also important in general relativity because, if it changes in time, it can produce gravitational radiation, similar to the electromagnetic radiation produced by oscillating electric or magnetic dipoles and higher multipoles. However, only quadrupole and higher moments can radiate gravitationally. The mass monopole represents the total mass-energy in a system, which is conserved—thus it gives off no radiation. Similarly, the mass dipole corresponds to the center of mass of a system and its first derivative represents momentum which is also a conserved quantity so the mass dipole also emits no radiation. The mass quadrupole, however, can change in time, and is the lowest-order contribution to gravitational radiation.[4]
The simplest and most important example of a radiating system is a pair of mass points with equal masses orbiting each other on a circular orbit, an approximation to e.g. special case of binary black holes. Since the dipole moment is constant, we can for convenience place the coordinate origin right between the two points. Then the dipole moment will be zero, and if we also scale the coordinates so that the points are at unit distance from the center, in opposite direction, the system's quadrupole moment will then simply be
where M is the mass of each point, and are components of the (unit) position vector of one of the points. As they orbit, this x-vector will rotate, which means that it will have a nonzero first, and also the second time derivative (this is of course true regardless the choice of the coordinate system). Therefore the system will radiate gravitational waves. Energy lost in this way was first inferred in the changing period of the Hulse–Taylor binary, a pulsar in orbit with another neutron star of similar mass.
Just as electric charge and current multipoles contribute to the electromagnetic field, mass and mass-current multipoles contribute to the gravitational field in general relativity, causing the so-called gravitomagnetic effects. Changing mass-current multipoles can also give off gravitational radiation. However, contributions from the current multipoles will typically be much smaller than that of the mass quadrupole.
See also[edit]
- Multipole expansion
- Multipole moments
- Solid harmonics
- Axial multipole moments
- Cylindrical multipole moments
- Spherical multipole moments
- Laplace expansion
- Legendre polynomials
- Quadrupole ion trap
- Quadrupole mass analyzer
- Multipolar exchange interaction
- Star quad cable
- Magnetic lens
- Quadrupole formula
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