The Periodic Standing-Wave Approximation: Overview and Three Dimensional Scalar Models

The periodic standing-wave method for binary inspiral computes the exact numerical solution for periodic binary motion with standing gravitational waves, and uses it as an approximation to slow binary inspiral with outgoing waves. Important features of this method presented here are: (i) the mathematical nature of the ``mixed'' partial differential equations to be solved, (ii) the meaning of standing waves in the method, (iii) computational difficulties, and (iv) the ``effective linearity'' that ultimately justifies the approximation. The method is applied to three dimensional nonlinear scalar model problems, and the numerical results are used to demonstrate extraction of the outgoing solution from the standing-wave solution, and the role of effective linearity.