Abstract The dynamics of compact binaries is very complicated because of spin-orbit coupling and spin-spin coupling. With Laskar's frequency map analysis (FMA) and frequency diffusion as an indicator, we found that misalignment of the spins and orbital angular momentum has a great effect on the dynamics, and for systems with different mass ratios β≡m2/m1 chaos occurs at different spin-orbit configurations. For equal-mass binaries (β = 1), chaos occurs when the spins nearly cancel each other out. For some other systems (for example β~1/2), the binaries are irregular, even chaotic, when the spins are perpendicular to the orbital angular momentum. For the case where gravitational radiation is taken into account, we give an analytic estimation for the frequency diffusion based on the decay of the orbit, which is roughly consistent with our simulations. This means the FMA is not suitable as a chaos indicator for weak chaotic cases with dissipative terms.
null
It accepts original submissions from all over the world and is internationally published and distributed by IOP