Remove the constant trace from the second mass moment tensor to obtain the mass quadrupole moment . Since is constant, . In units , the quadrupole formula gives
Its normalization can also be seen from the gravitational-wave energy flux: , where is the transverse-traceless projector. With and , the projection is . For a symmetric trace-free ,
The isotropic tensor integrals and therefore give . Integrating the flux yields , as above.
Now differentiate the components from part (i). With ,
The off-diagonal component occurs twice in the contraction. Thus
It is already time independent, so averaging gives
This is the leading gravitational radiation from a rotating triaxial body; restoring units multiplies it by . The source is treated as rotating uniformly over an averaging interval, with radiation reaction negligible at this order.
The time-dependent components of the second mass moment tensor contain and . Taking two time derivatives for the retarded quadrupole field leaves that frequency unchanged. Hence the gravitational-wave frequency is
Here is angular frequency and counts cycles per unit time. If , the mass quadrupole moment is time independent, so the leading gravitational wave amplitude vanishes and there is no emitted quadrupole frequency to measure.
Write and use the right-handed rotation
In the integral defining the second mass moment tensor, change variables to . The determinant is one and , giving
Set and . Multiplication gives
In particular, is constant. These expressions also show how the rotating anisotropy enters the mass quadrupole moment.
The outgoing solution obtained from the retarded fundamental solution of the wave equation is
In the radiation zone, put , , and retain the leading term at retarded time . The trace term disappears after applying the transverse-traceless projector
so
Twice using stress-energy conservation, , and integrating by parts gives
The projector removes the trace, so in terms of the mass quadrupole moment
the far field is
The gravitational-wave energy flux is
For a trace-free symmetric tensor , the isotropic tensor integral over the observation direction gives
Consequently the standard quadrupole formula, in the units used by the paper, is
Thus the printed coefficient is inconsistent with the stated definition of and the standard wave-energy normalization; it appears to be a typographical error.
For the planet, choose its circular orbit in the -plane and write . With the star treated as fixed,
and hence
Direct differentiation gives
so
Restoring units multiplies this by . If the printed coefficient is followed literally, the answer is instead times larger,
For two bodies of comparable mass, is replaced by the reduced mass and by their separation.
Second mass moment tensor 2026-10-05
The second mass moment tensor records the quadratic spatial distribution of mass. Its trace-free part is the mass quadrupole moment . The mechanical moment-of-inertia tensor instead equals . A rigid rotation transforms the second mass moment tensor as .