Fourth post-Newtonian effective one-body dynamics

Abstract

The conservative dynamics of gravitationally interacting two-point-mass systems has been recently determined at the fourth post-Newtonian (4PN) approximation [T. Damour, P. Jaranowski, and G. Sch\"afer, Phys. Rev. D 89, 064058 (2014)], and found to be nonlocal in time. We show how to transcribe this dynamics within the effective one-body (EOB) formalism. To achieve this EOB transcription, we develop a new strategy involving the (infinite-)order-reduction of a nonlocal dynamics to an ordinary action-angle Hamiltonian. Our final, equivalent EOB dynamics comprises two (local) radial potentials, $A(r)$ and $\overline{D}(r)$, and a nongeodesic mass-shell contribution $Q(r,{p}_{r})$ given by an infinite series of even powers of the radial momentum ${p}_{r}$. Using an effective action technique, we complete our 4PN-level results by deriving two different, higher-order conservative contributions linked to tail-transported hereditary effects: the 5PN-level EOB logarithmic terms, as well as the 5.5PN-level, half-integral terms. We compare our improved analytical knowledge to previous, numerical gravitational-self-force computation of precession effects.