Gravitational waves in high energy fixed-target collisions

A bstract The gravitational field of two-body system, a high energetic particle and a massive particle at rest, is studied in the linearized Einstein gravity. The ultrarelativistic particle yields a plane-fronted gravitational shockwave which perturbes gravitational field of the particle at rest. The problem can be also considered as a fixed-target high energy collision. We show that this collision is accompanied by the gravitational radiation, as is expected from the earlier results on the high-energy scattering. The new effect is a secondary spherical gravitational shockwave when the initial shockwave hits the massive particle. In the considered approximation the flux of gravitational radiation and the amplitude of the spherical shockwave are found in an analytic form. The suggested approach is also applicable when the null particle is replaced by plane null shells of a general profile. Implications of these effects for astrophysics are shortly discussed.