• Accepted Paper

Sound of Keplerian binaries in a homogeneous Newtonian fluid background

Yan Cao and Mu-Chun Chen

Phys. Rev. D - Accepted 20 October, 2026

DOI: https://doi.org/10.1103/jb2n-lmgv

Abstract

We formulate the dissipation due to sound-wave emission from a Keplerian binary embedded in a homogeneous Newtonian fluid background at rest in the binary center-of-mass frame using linear perturbation theory. Rather than starting from the local wake force, we treat the binary as a localized periodic mass source and compute the sound-wave fluxes carried away by the medium. The time-averaged energy, linear-momentum, and angular-momentum fluxes are obtained from Noether currents of the fluid perturbations. For a classical inviscid barotropic Newtonian fluid, retaining the self-gravity of density perturbations while adopting the Jeans prescription, we derive explicit flux formulae for circular and eccentric binaries with arbitrary mass ratio. This formulation also clarifies the ultraviolet behavior of point sources: in a nondispersive fluid the harmonic sum becomes cutoff-sensitive precisely when at least one component becomes supersonic. We examine explicitly how finite source size removes this divergence using a uniform-sphere model and relate the resulting regularization to a corresponding effective harmonic cutoff. The associated secular eccentricity evolution exhibits circularization in the subsonic regime when the fluid self-gravity is sufficiently weak, but can change sign outside this regime, with eccentricity growth in the strictly supersonic UV limit. For a Schrödinger–Poisson quantum fluid, quantum pressure instead softens the high-frequency contribution and renders the point-source fluxes UV finite within the nonrelativistic regime; our numerical results further indicate eccentricity growth due to sound radiation over the parameter space explored. Finally, we translate orbital-decay measurements of two binary pulsars into order-of-magnitude bounds on the homogeneous quantum-fluid density surrounding each system.

Export citation

Export citation

Choose format for download:

Download Citation

If the author has provided any supplemental materials with this article they will be available upon publication of the version of record.

Sign In to Your Journals Account

Filter

Filter

Article Lookup

Enter a citation