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Physical Sciences and Mathematics Commons

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Department of Physics and Astronomy Faculty Scholarship and Creative Works

2009

Gravitational waves

Articles 1 - 2 of 2

Full-Text Articles in Physical Sciences and Mathematics

Nonlinear Gravitational-Wave Memory From Binary Black Hole Mergers, Marc Favata Jan 2009

Nonlinear Gravitational-Wave Memory From Binary Black Hole Mergers, Marc Favata

Department of Physics and Astronomy Faculty Scholarship and Creative Works

Some astrophysical sources of gravitational waves can produce a "memory effect," which causes a permanent displacement of the test masses in a freely falling gravitational-wave detector. The Christodoulou memory is a particularly interesting nonlinear form of memory that arises from the gravitational-wave stress-energy tensor's contribution to the distant gravitational-wave field. This nonlinear memory contributes a nonoscillatory component to the gravitational-wave signal at leading (Newtonian-quadrupole) order in the waveform amplitude. Previous computations of the memory and its detectability considered only the inspiral phase of binary black hole coalescence. Using an "effective-one-body" (EOB) approach calibrated to numerical relativity simulations, as well as …


Stacked Search For Gravitational Waves From The 2006 Sgr 1900+14 Storm, B. P. Abbott, R. Abbott, R. Adhikari, P. Ajith, B. Allen, G. Allen, R. S. Amin, S. B. Anderson, W. G. Anderson, Rodica Martin Jan 2009

Stacked Search For Gravitational Waves From The 2006 Sgr 1900+14 Storm, B. P. Abbott, R. Abbott, R. Adhikari, P. Ajith, B. Allen, G. Allen, R. S. Amin, S. B. Anderson, W. G. Anderson, Rodica Martin

Department of Physics and Astronomy Faculty Scholarship and Creative Works

We present the results of a LIGO search for short-duration gravitational waves (GWs) associated with the 2006 March 29 SGR 1900+14 storm. A new search method is used, "stacking" the GW data around the times of individual soft-gamma bursts in the storm to enhance sensitivity for models in which multiple bursts are accompanied by GW emission. We assume that variation in the time difference between burst electromagnetic emission and potential burst GW emission is small relative to the GW signal duration, and we time-align GW excess power time-frequency tilings containing individual burst triggers to their corresponding electromagnetic emissions. We use …