Neutron stars in binary orbit emit gravitational waves and spiral slowly
together. During this inspiral, they are expected to have very little
vorticity. It is in fact a good approximation to treat the system as having
zero vorticity, i.e., as irrotational. Because the orbital period is much
shorter than the radiation reaction time scale, it is also an excellent
approximation to treat the system as evolving through a sequence of equilibrium
states, in each of which the gravitational radiation is neglected. In Newtonian
gravity, one can simplify the hydrodynamic equations considerably for an
equilibrium irrotational binary by introducing a velocity potential. The
equations reduce to a Poisson-like equation for the potential, and a
Bernoulli-type integral for the density. We show that a similar simplification
can be carried out in general relativity. The resulting equations are much
easier to solve than other formulations of the problem.Comment: 14 pages, AASTeX, accepted in ApJ. Simplified final form of equation
(eq. 52). Added Shibata re