TY - JOUR

T1 - Inferring the gravitational wave memory for binary coalescence events

AU - Khera, Neev

AU - Krishnan, Badri

AU - Ashtekar, Abhay

AU - De Lorenzo, Tommaso

N1 - Funding Information: This work was supported by the NSF Grants No. PHY-1505411 and No. PHY-1806356 and the Eberly Chair funds of Penn State. We thank Alessandra Buonanno, Frank Ohme, Eric Thrane, Paul Lasky, Geraint Pratten, and Vijay Varma for discussions and comments. We acknowledge the use of the LAL Simulation [71] and pycbc [97] software packages in this paper. This research made use of data, software, and/or web tools obtained from the Gravitational Wave Open Science Center [98], a service of LIGO Laboratory, the LIGO Scientific Collaboration, and the Virgo Collaboration. LIGO is funded by the U.S. National Science Foundation. Virgo is funded by the French Centre National de Recherche Scientifique, the Italian Istituto Nazionale della Fisica Nucleare, and the Dutch Nikhef, with contributions by Polish and Hungarian institutes.

PY - 2021/2/8

Y1 - 2021/2/8

N2 - Full, nonlinear general relativity predicts a memory effect for gravitational waves. For compact binary coalescence, the total gravitational memory serves as an inferred observable, conceptually on the same footing as the mass and the spin of the final black hole. Given candidate waveforms for any LIGO-Virgo event, then one can calculate the posterior probability distribution functions for the total gravitational memory and use them to compare and contrast the waveforms. In this paper, we present these posterior distributions for the binary black hole merger events reported in the first Gravitational Wave Transient Catalog, using the phenomenological and effective-one-body waveforms. On the whole, the two sets of posterior distributions agree with each other quite well though we find larger discrepancies for the =2, m=1 mode of the memory. This signals a possible source of systematic errors that was not captured by the posterior distributions of other inferred observables. Thus, the posterior distributions of various angular modes of total memory can serve as diagnostic tools to further improve the waveforms. Analyses such as this would be valuable especially for future events as the sensitivity of ground-based detectors improves, and for LISA which could measure the total gravitational memory directly.

AB - Full, nonlinear general relativity predicts a memory effect for gravitational waves. For compact binary coalescence, the total gravitational memory serves as an inferred observable, conceptually on the same footing as the mass and the spin of the final black hole. Given candidate waveforms for any LIGO-Virgo event, then one can calculate the posterior probability distribution functions for the total gravitational memory and use them to compare and contrast the waveforms. In this paper, we present these posterior distributions for the binary black hole merger events reported in the first Gravitational Wave Transient Catalog, using the phenomenological and effective-one-body waveforms. On the whole, the two sets of posterior distributions agree with each other quite well though we find larger discrepancies for the =2, m=1 mode of the memory. This signals a possible source of systematic errors that was not captured by the posterior distributions of other inferred observables. Thus, the posterior distributions of various angular modes of total memory can serve as diagnostic tools to further improve the waveforms. Analyses such as this would be valuable especially for future events as the sensitivity of ground-based detectors improves, and for LISA which could measure the total gravitational memory directly.

UR - http://www.scopus.com/inward/record.url?scp=85100994072&partnerID=8YFLogxK

U2 - 10.1103/PhysRevD.103.044012

DO - 10.1103/PhysRevD.103.044012

M3 - Article

AN - SCOPUS:85100994072

VL - 103

JO - Physical Review D

JF - Physical Review D

SN - 2470-0010

IS - 4

M1 - 044012

ER -