RADIATION FROM A D-DIMENSIONAL COLLISION OF SHOCK WAVES: HIGHER ORDER FORMALISM AND BONDI MASS

We present a higher order generalisation of the perturbative method to find the metric after the collision of two Aichelburg-Sexl gravitational shock waves in D-dimensions. A central challenge is to extract a higher order estimate for the inelasticity. We present an adaptation of the Bondi mass loss formula in D-dimensions, which allows us to obtain an expression valid non-perturbatively, for axially symmetric asymptotically flat spaces.