Gravitational Synchrotron Radiation in the Schwarzschild Geometry

Abstract

The existence of a mechanism for gravitational synchrotron radiation is demonstrated in solutions of the wave equation in the Schwarzschild background, with the source a particle in a highly relativistic circular geodesic. The main features (high-frequency harmonics, narrow angular distribution in latitude) are shown to hold for vector (electromagnetic) and tensor (gravitational) radiations, which are expected to be strongly polarized in the orbit plane. Detailed formulas for the spectrum are given in the scalar case.