The gravitational waveforms of a chaotic system will exhibit sensitive
dependence on initial conditions. The waveforms of nearby orbits decohere on a
timescale fixed by the largest Lyapunov exponent of the orbit. The loss of
coherence has important observational consequences for systems where the
Lyapunov timescale is short compared to the chirp timescale. Detectors that
rely on matched filtering techniques will be unable to detect gravitational
waves from these systems.Comment: 4 pages, no figure

Cornish, Neil J.