Effect of a viscous fluid shell on the propagation of gravitational waves

Understand

In this paper we show that there are circumstances in which the damping of gravitational waves (GWs) propagating through a viscous fluid can be highly significant; in particular, this applies to Core Collapse Supernovae (CCSNe).

• In previous work, we used linearized perturbations on a fixed background within the Bondi-Sachs formalism, to determine the effect of a dust shell on GW propagation.
• Here, we start with the (previously found) velocity field of the matter, and use it to determine the shear tensor of the fluid flow.
• Then, for a viscous fluid, the energy dissipated is calculated, leading to an equation for GW damping.