Quantisation of Gravitational Waves through Angular Momentum -- A Thought Experiment

Souvik

<jabberwocky><div class="vbmenu_control"><a href="jabberwocky:;" onClick="newWindow=window.open('','usenetCode','toolbar=no,location=no, scrollbars=yes,resizable=yes,status=no,width=650,height=400'); newWindow.document.write('<HTML><HEAD><TITLE>Usenet ASCII</TITLE></HEAD><BODY topmargin=0 leftmargin=0 BGCOLOR=#F1F1F1><table border=0 width=625><td bgcolor=midnightblue><font color=#F1F1F1>This Usenet message\'s original ASCII form: </font></td></tr><tr><td width=449><br><br><font face=courier><UL><PRE>r...@maths.tcd.ie wrote:\n\n> There are certainly masses both bigger and smaller than the\n> Planck mass.\n\nWe know that angular momentum comes in packets of h/2pi.\n\nConsider a binary star system with two stars of equal masses on a\nsimple circular orbit around their centre of mass.\n\nWe can calculate the angular momentum being spewed out in gravitational\nwaves by the system. If we require this angular momentum to come in\npackets of hbar, what can we infer about the quantisation of\ngravitational waves -- or the masses of the binary star system?\n\nI don\'t know enough GR to pull this through, but in a semi-Newtonian\napproximation, it looks like the reduced mass of the system is\nquantised by Planck\'s masses. That doesn\'t make sense and must be wrong\n:-). Could people who know GR try this out and let me know?\n\nThanks!\n\n</UL></PRE></font></td></tr></table></BODY><HTML>');"> <IMG SRC=/images/buttons/ip.gif BORDER=0 ALIGN=CENTER ALT="View this Usenet post in original ASCII form">  View this Usenet post in original ASCII form </a></div><P></jabberwocky>r...@maths.tcd.ie wrote:

> There are certainly masses both bigger and smaller than the
> Planck mass.

We know that angular momentum comes in packets of [itex]h/2pi[/itex].

Consider a binary star system with two stars of equal masses on a
simple circular orbit around their centre of mass.

We can calculate the angular momentum being spewed out in gravitational
waves by the system. If we require this angular momentum to come in
packets of [itex]\hbar,[/itex] what can we infer about the quantisation of
gravitational waves -- or the masses of the binary star system?

I don't know enough GR to pull this through, but in a semi-Newtonian
approximation, it looks like the reduced mass of the system is
quantised by Planck's masses. That doesn't make sense and must be wrong
:-). Could people who know GR try this out and let me know?

Thanks!

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