Steve Detweiler,
Professor of physics in the
IFT and the
Physics Department of the
College of Liberal Arts and Sciences at the
University of Florida in Gainesville FL

Office: 2071 New Physics Building
Phone: (352) 392-4948
fax : (352) 392-0524
email: det at phys.ufl.edu

My department web page.

Research interests:
Two black holes in a close orbit about each other emit gravitational waves, which might be detectable by the LIGO or LISA projects within the next ten years. But, at this time, we know surprisingly little about the details of the final coalescence of the black holes. In particular, we are ignorant of how the amplitude and frequency of the radiation change with time. Knowledge of these details would aid immensely in our search for gravitational waves.

This version of a manuscript placed on the gr-qc ArXive , Perspective on gravitational self-force analyses, has been recently modified to conform to the version published in Classical and Quantum Gravity. The differences from the gr-qc version are a streamlined notation for vector and tensor harmonics, and an augmented list of references. This paper was chosen as one of the "Highlights of 2005/2006" by the editorial board of Classical and Quantum Gravity.

Selected recent publications:

"Scalar field self-force effects on orbits about a Schwarzschild black hole,"
with L. M. Diaz-Rivera, E. Messaritaki, and B. Whiting,
http://arxiv.org/abs/gr-qc/0410011 ; In press
Phys. Rev. D, December 2004.

"Low multipole contributions to the gravitational self-force,"
with E. Poisson,
Phys. Rev., D69, 084019 (2004);
http://arxiv.org/abs/gr-qc/0312010 .

"Self-force of a scalar field for circular orbits about a Schwarzschild black hole,"
with E. Messaritaki and B.F. Whiting
Phys. Rev. D67, 104016 (2003);
http://arxiv.org/abs/gr-qc/0205079 .

"Self-force via a Green's function decomposition",
with B.F. Whiting,
Phy. Rev. D67, 024025 (2003).
http://arxiv.org/abs/gr-qc/0202086 .

"Radiation reaction and the self-force for a point mass in general relativity,"
Phys. Rev. Lett., 86, 1931-1934 (2001);
http://arxiv.org/abs/gr-qc/0011039 .

Recent talks:

"Gravitational self-force effects on orbits around a non-rotating black hole,"
"Short primer of the self-force"
Capra VIII, Rutherford-Appleton Laboratory, Oxfordshire, July 12, 2005. 

"Radiation reaction and the self-force in extreme mass ratio binary systems,"
The talk starts up about 2:30 into the recording.
PennState, April 2005.