Assessing pulsar timing array sensitivity to gravitational wave bursts with memory

Journal Article · Fri Jun 20 04:00:00 EDT 2014 · Astrophysical Journal

DOI:https://doi.org/10.1088/0004-637X/788/2/141· OSTI ID:22356593

Madison, D. R.; Cordes, J. M.; Chatterjee, S. ^[1]

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1. Department of Astronomy and Center for Radiophysics and Space Research, Cornell University, Ithaca, NY 14853 (United States)

Highly energetic astrophysical phenomena like supermassive black hole binary (SMBHB) mergers are predicted to emit prodigious amounts of gravitational waves (GWs). An anticipated component of the gravitational waveform known as 'memory' is permanent and nonoscillatory. For SMBHB mergers, the memory is created primarily during the most violent moments of the inspiral immediately preceding the final plunge and ring-down when the strongest gravitational fields are at work and the nonlinearities of general relativity are most pronounced. The essentially time-domain nature of memory makes it forbiddingly difficult to detect with ground based GW detectors, leaving pulsar timing array (PTA) experiments as the most promising means by which it may be detected and studied. In this paper, we discuss how GW bursts with memory (BWMs) influence pulsar timing experiments and develop methods to assess how sensitive modern timing efforts are to such GW events. We discuss how PTA searches for BWMs can be used to constrain the rate of BWMs and how these constraints relate to information regarding the population of SMBHBs.

• OSTI ID: 22356593
• Journal Information: Astrophysical Journal, Journal Name: Astrophysical Journal Journal Issue: 2 Vol. 788; ISSN ASJOAB; ISSN 0004-637X
• Country of Publication: United States
• Language: English

Related Subjects

79 ASTRONOMY AND ASTROPHYSICS
ASTROPHYSICS
BINARY STARS
BLACK HOLES
EMISSION
GENERAL RELATIVITY THEORY
GRAVITATIONAL FIELDS
GRAVITATIONAL WAVES
NONLINEAR PROBLEMS
PULSARS
SENSITIVITY