Non-linear Oscillations of Compact Stars and Gravitational Waves

This thesis investigates in the time domain a particular class of second order perturbations of a perfect fluid non-rotating compact star: those arising from the coupling between first order radial and non-radial perturbations. This problem has been treated by developing a gauge invariant formalism based on the 2-parameter perturbation theory (Sopuerta, Bruni and Gualtieri, 2004) where the radial and non-radial perturbations have been separately parameterized. The non-linear perturbations obey inhomogeneous partial differential equations, where the structure of the differential operator is given by the previous perturbative orders and the source terms are quadratic in the first order perturbations. In the exterior spacetime the sources vanish, thus the gravitational wave properties are completely described by the second order Zerilli and Regge-Wheeler functions. As main initial configuration we have considered a first order differentially rotating and radially pulsating star. Although at first perturbative order this configuration does not exhibit any gravitational radiation, we have found a new interesting gravitational signal at non-linear order, in which the radial normal modes are precisely mirrored. In addition, a resonance effect is present when the frequencies of the radial pulsations are close to the first axial w-mode. Finally, we have roughly estimated the damping times of the radial pulsations due to the non-linear gravitational emission. The coupling near the resonance results to be a very effective mechanism for extracting energy from the radial oscillations.