The gravitational-wave signal from inspiralling neutron-star--neutron-star (or black-hole--neutron-star) binaries will be influenced by tidal coupling in the system. An important science goal in the gravitational-wave detection of these systems is to obtain information about the equation of state of neutron star matter via the measurement of the tidal polarizability parameters of neutron stars. To extract this piece of information will require to have accurate analytical descriptions of both the motion and the radiation of tidally interacting binaries. We improve the analytical description of the late inspiral dynamics by computing the next-to-next-to-leading order relativistic correction to the tidal interaction energy. Our calculation is based on an effective-action approach to tidal interactions, and on its transcription within the effective-one-body formalism. We find that second-order relativistic effects (quadratic in the relativistic gravitational potential $u=G(m_1 +m_2)/(c^2 r)$) significantly increase the effective tidal polarizability of neutron stars by a distance-dependent amplification factor of the form $1 + \alpha_1 \, u + \alpha_2 \, u^2 + \cdots $ where, say for an equal-mass binary, $\alpha_1=5/4=1.25$ (as previously known) and $\alpha_2=85/14\simeq6.07143$ (as determined here for the first time). We argue that higher-order relativistic effects will lead to further amplification, and we suggest a Pad\'e-type way of resumming them. We recommend to test our results by comparing resolution-extrapolated numerical simulations of inspiralling-binary neutron stars to their effective one body description.

The motion of a particle in the Tolman metric generated by a photon gas source is discussed. Both the case of geodesic motion and motion with nonzero friction, due to photon scattering effects, are analyzed. In the Minkowski limit, the particle moves along a straight line segment with a decelerated motion, reaching the endpoint at zero speed. The curved case shows a qualitatively different behavior; the geodesic motion consists of periodic orbits, confined within a specific radial interval. Under the effect of frictional drag, this radial interval closes up in time and in all our numerical simulations the particle ends up in the singularity at the center.

To confront relativity theory with observation, it is necessary to split spacetime into its temporal and spatial components. The timelike threading approach involves fundamental observers that are at rest in space; indeed, this (1+3) splitting implies restrictions on the gravitational potentials $(g_{\mu \nu})$. On the other hand, the spacelike slicing approach involves (3+1) splittings of any congruence of observers with corresponding restrictions on $(g^{\mu \nu})$. These latter coordinate conditions exclude closed timelike curves (CTCs) within any such coordinate patch. While the threading coordinate conditions can be naturally integrated into the structure of Lorentzian geometry and constitute the standard coordinate conditions in general relativity, this circumstance does not extend to the slicing coordinate conditions. From this viewpoint, the existence of CTCs is not, in principle, prohibited by classical general relativity.

Tidal indicators are commonly associated with the electric and magnetic parts of the Riemann tensor (and its covariant derivatives) with respect to a given family of observers in a given spacetime. Recently, observer-dependent tidal effects have been extensively investigated with respect to a variety of special observers in the equatorial plane of the Kerr spacetime. This analysis is extended here by considering a more general background solution to include the case of matter which is also endowed with an arbitrary mass quadrupole moment. Relation with curvature invariants and Bel-Robinson tensor, i.e., observer-dependent super-energy density and super-Poynting vector, are investigated too.

The features of the scattering of massive neutral particles propagating in the field of a gravitational plane wave are compared with those characterizing their interaction with an electromagnetic radiation field. The motion is geodesic in the former case, whereas in the case of an electromagnetic pulse it is accelerated by the radiation field filling the associated spacetime region. The interaction with the radiation field is modeled by a force term entering the equations of motion proportional to the 4-momentum density of radiation observed in the particle's rest frame. The corresponding classical scattering cross sections are evaluated too.

Starting from the function values on the roots of Jacobi polynomials, we construct a class of discrete de la Vallée Poussin means, by approximating the Fourier coefficients with a Gauss-Jacobi quadrature rule. Unlike the Lagrange interpolation polynomials, the resulting algebraic polynomials are uniformly convergent in suitable spaces of continuous functions, the order of convergence being comparable with the best polynomial approximation. Moreover, in the four Chebyshev cases the discrete de la Vallée Poussin means share the Lagrange interpolation property, which allows us to reduce the computational cost.

The importance of singular integral transforms, coming from their many applications, justifies some interest in their numerical approximation. Here we propose a stable and convergent algorithm to evaluate such transforms on the real line. Numerical examples confirming the theoretical results are given.

The problem of reconstructing signals and images from degraded ones is considered in this paper. The latter problem is formulated as a linear system whose coefficient matrix models the unknown point spread function and the right hand side represents the observed image. Moreover, the coefficient matrix is very ill-conditioned, requiring an additional regularization term. Different boundary conditions can be proposed. In this paper antireflective boundary conditions are considered. Since both sides of the linear system have uncertainties and the coefficient matrix is highly structured, the Regularized Structured Total Least Squares approach seems to be the more appropriate one to compute an approximation of the true signal/image. With the latter approach the original problem is formulated as an highly nonconvex one, and seldom can the global minimum be computed. It is shown that Regularized Structured Total Least Squares problems for antireflective boundary conditions can be decomposed into single variable subproblems by a discrete sine transform. Such subproblems are then transformed into one-dimensional unimodal realvalued minimization problems which can be solved globally. Some numerical examples show the effectiveness of the proposed approach.

We consider here the problem of tracking the dominant eigenspace of an indefinite matrix by updating recursively a rank k approximation of the given matrix. The tracking uses a window of the given matrix, which increases at every step of the algorithm. Therefore, the rank of the approximation increases also, and hence a rank reduction of the approximation is needed to retrieve an approximation of rank k. In order to perform the window adaptation and the rank reduction in an efficient manner, we make use of a new antitriangular decomposition for indefinite matrices. All steps of the algorithm only make use of orthogonal transformations, which guarantees the stability of the intermediate steps. We also show some numerical experiments to illustrate the performance of the tracking algorithm.