Propagate stochastic force fluctuations into inspiral observables

Propagate the stochastic induced-wake force fluctuations through the evolving orbital parameters and gravitational-waveform phases of an inspiraling compact binary.

Background

For binaries remaining within one quasi-static interference patch, the paper finds order-unity realization-dependent fluctuations in the orbit-averaged flux and notes that the force remains correlated over the coherence time. Over a longer inspiral, these fluctuations could produce stochastic orbital drift and diffusion.

The paper does not determine how these fluctuations accumulate in the orbital elements or gravitational-wave phase. Such a calculation is needed to assess their impact on waveform modeling and detectability.

References

We defer the propagation of these stochastic force fluctuations into orbital parameters and waveform phases to future work.

— Dynamical Friction in an Ultralight Scalar Medium across Coherent and Stochastic Regimes  (2609.28641 - Mitra et al., 23 Sep 2026) in Section 5.2.1, subsection “One quasi-static patch: cases 3, 4, and 8”