Plasma coupling to gravitational waves: Developing a variational approach*

The recent detection of gravitational waves (GW) has stimulated increased interest in GW interactions with astrophysical plasmas, which are generally expected to involve electromagnetic effects. Existing theories of these interactions are cumbersome already for homogeneous waves; hence, they are not easily extendable to time-dependent effects that may involve mode conversion and nonlinear phenomena. We are developing a variational formulation to GW-plasma interactions to make such effects more tractable.