Computing and detecting gravitational-wave memory effects from binary-black-hole mergers

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• David Nichols
• Wednesday 01 May 2019, 14:30-15:30
• PW 117.

If you have a question about this talk, please contact Sean McGee.

Gravitational waves from the mergers of ten binary black holes were detected in the first two observing runs by the advanced LIGO and Virgo detectors; the total number of detections is likely to double, at least, after the current observing run. With this large number of increasingly precisely measured binary black holes, the observations will reveal more subtle features in the gravitational waves from strongly curved, dynamical spacetimes. In this talk, I will discuss one such set of features, called gravitational-wave memory effects, which are predictions of general relativity that are most likely to be measured from systems with high gravitational-wave luminosities, like binary black holes. These memory effects are characterized by lasting changes in the gravitational-wave strain and its time integrals. I will describe how these effects are related to symmetries and conserved quantities of spacetime. I will also cover the computation of these memory effects and the prospects for detecting them with current and planned gravitational-wave detectors. There could be evidence for the memory effect in just a few years of advanced LIGO , Virgo, and KAGRA data, although the precise timescale will depend upon the properties of the population of merging binary black holes and the rate of these mergers.

This talk is part of the Astrophysics Talks Series series.

This talk is included in these lists:

• Astrophysics Talks Series
• Bham Talks
• PW 117
• What's on in Physics?

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