Gravitational wave memory and its effects on particles and fields
arXiv:2407.00174 · doi:10.1103/PhysRevD.111.024034
Abstract
Gravitational wave memory is said to arise when a gravitational wave burst produces changes in a physical system that persist even after that wave has passed. This paper analyzes gravitational wave bursts in plane wave spacetimes, deriving memory effects for timelike and null geodesics, massless scalar fields, and massless spinning particles whose motion is described by the spin Hall equations. We find that all such effects are characterized by four "memory tensors," three of which are independent. We also show that memory effects for null geodesics can have strong longitudinal components, even in vacuum general relativity. When considering massless particles with spin, we solve the spin Hall equations analytically by showing that there exists a conservation law associated with each conformal Killing vector. For the scattering of fields by gravitational waves, we show that given any solution to the massless scalar field equation in flat spacetime, a weak-field solution in a plane wave spacetime can be generated just by applying an appropriate differential operator -- an operator that is constructed from the aforementioned memory tensors. Memory effects for scalar fields are illustrated for both incoming plane waves and higher-order Gaussian beams. We also present a numerical comparison between the spin Hall equations and the full evolution of localized wave packets with angular momentum. Although we work in plane wave spacetimes, which are physically idealized, similar results are also expected to apply for sufficiently small systems affected by distantly generated gravitational waves. Using the Penrose limit, our results may also apply to ultrarelativistic systems at arbitrary locations in arbitrary (even nonradiating) spacetimes.
References in corpus (76)
- Transverse and longitudinal angular momenta of light
- The motion of point particles in curved spacetime
- The international pulsar timing array project: using pulsars as a gravitational wave detector
- New Gravitational Memories
- Spatio-temporal vortex beams and angular momentum
- Conserved charges of the extended Bondi-Metzner-Sachs algebra
- The gravitational-wave memory effect
- Detecting gravitational-wave memory with LIGO: implications of GW150914
- Spatiotemporal Vortex Pulses: Angular Momenta and Spin-Orbit Interaction
- An electromagnetic analog of gravitational wave memory
- Scattering on plane waves and the double copy
- Spin Hall effect of Photons in a Static Gravitational Field
- The Memory Effect for Plane Gravitational Waves
- Gravitational-wave memory and pulsar timing arrays
- Spin memory effect for compact binaries in the post-Newtonian approximation
- Soft Gravitons & the Memory Effect for Plane Gravitational Waves
- Gravitational spin Hall effect of light
- Center-of-mass angular momentum and memory effect in asymptotically flat spacetimes
- Forecasts for detecting the gravitational-wave memory effect with Advanced LIGO and Virgo
- Black hole memory effect
- Carroll symmetry of plane gravitational waves
- The Asymptotic Behavior of Massless Fields and the Memory Effect
- The Causal Structure of QED in Curved Spacetime: Analyticity and the Refractive Index
- Center of mass, spin supplementary conditions, and the momentum of spinning particles
- Persistent gravitational wave observables: general framework
- Velocity Memory Effect for Polarized Gravitational Waves
- Examination of a simple example of gravitational wave memory
- Classical and quantum double copy of back-reaction
- Fermi Coordinates and Penrose Limits
- Propagation of polarized gravitational waves
- Motion in classical field theories and the foundations of the self-force problem
- Caustics and wave propagation in curved spacetimes
- Persistent gravitational wave observables: Curve deviation in asymptotically flat spacetimes
- Gravitational breathing memory and dual symmetries
- Approximate spacetime symmetries and conservation laws
- The Precession Caused by Gravitational Waves
- Spin Hall effect of gravitational waves
- Maxwell equations in a curved spacetime: Spin optics approximation
- Memory Effect for Impulsive Gravitational Waves
- Geometric optics in general relativity using bilocal operators
- Black Hole Memory
- Amplitudes on plane waves from ambitwistor strings
- Optics in a nonlinear gravitational plane wave
- Semiclassical analysis of Dirac fields on curved spacetime
- Strong lensing, plane gravitational waves and transient flashes
- Persistent gravitational wave observables: Nonlinear plane wave spacetimes
- Tails of plane wave spacetimes: Wave-wave scattering in general relativity
- Towards Communication in a Curved Spacetime Geometry
- Geodesic congruences in exact plane wave spacetimes and the memory effect
- The First-Order Velocity Memory Effect from Compact Binary Coalescing Sources
- Sturm-Liouville and Carroll: at the heart of the Memory Effect
- Frequency- and polarization-dependent lensing of gravitational waves in strong gravitational fields
- Reduced phase space optics for general relativity: Symplectic ray bundle transfer
- Ion Traps and the Memory Effect for Periodic Gravitational Waves
- Probing general relativistic spin-orbit coupling with gravitational waves from hierarchical triple systems
- Spin Hall effects in the sky
- Persistent Astrometric Deflections from Gravitational-Wave Memory
- A simple analytic example of the gravitational wave memory effect
- Exact Parallel Waves in General Relativity
- Killing tensors in pp-wave spacetimes
- Gravitational Wave Displacement and Velocity Memory Effects
- Weyl geometric effects on the propagation of light in gravitational fields
- Geometric optics in relativistic cosmology: new formulation and a new observable
- Gravitational lensing beyond geometric optics: II. Metric independence
- Displacement within velocity effect in gravitational wave memory
- New Effects in Gravitational Waves and Memory
- Weighing the spacetime along the line of sight using times of arrival of electromagnetic signals
- Persistent gravitational wave observables: Nonlinearities in (non-)geodesic deviation
- The memory effect in impulsive plane waves: comments, corrections, clarifications
- Memory Effect and Carroll Symmetry: 50 years later
- Parallel spinors, pp-waves, and gravitational perturbations
- There is no 'velocity kick' memory in electrodynamics
- Bilocal geodesic operators in static spherically-symmetric spacetimes
- Algebraic symmetries of the observables on the sky: Variable emitters and observers
- Dynamics, quantum states and Compton scattering in nonlinear gravitational waves
- Test gravitational waves in sandwich wave background