Gravity seminar - Luc Blanchet Seminar

Post-Newtonian theory is at the origin of many of the great successes of general relativity when confronted to observations, e.g. the four "classical" tests in the Solar System and the wonderful test of the orbital decay of the binary pulsar by gravitational radiation. With the forthcoming detection and analysis of gravitational waves generated by compact binary systems (neutron stars and black holes), PN theory will again play a crucial role when building gravitational wave templates --- i.e. the basic GR prediction for these systems. In this talk we shall recall how a combination of analytical PN approximations for the inspiral phase and numerical methods for the merger phase solves the problem of GR templates. We shall then discuss more recent topics, including the comparison of PN predictions with those based on black hole perturbation theory and especially self-force theory, and our recent derivation of the equations of motion of compact binaries at the 4PN approximation by means of a Fokker action in harmonic coordinates.