SPECTRAL-ANALYSIS OF THE GRAVITATIONAL-RADIATION EMITTED BY BINARY-SYSTEMS IN MODERATELY ECCENTRIC ORBITS - APPLICATION TO COALESCING BINARIES

We obtain the form of the gravitational waves emitted by eccentric bin ary systems, including general relativistic periastron advance effects . Using the method of stationary phase, we find the Fourier transform of the amplitude. The Fourier analysis is based on an approximation of the waveform consisting of a linear superposition of five harmonics o f the orbital frequency, valid up to medium eccentricities (e congruen t-to 0.33). We show that it is not necessary to change the detector pa rameters in a light-recycling design to achieve the optimum signal-to- noise ratio for the different harmonics. We also find that, for eccent ric orbits, the observation time window can be enlarged by a factor of 10 in some cases.