Memory Effect and BMS-like Symmetries for Impulsive Gravitational Waves
Abstract
Cataclysmic astrophysical phenomena can produce impulsive gravitational waves that can possibly be detected by the advanced versions of present-day detectors in the future. Gluing of two spacetimes across a null surface produces impulsive gravitational waves (in the phraseology of Penrose [1]) having a Dirac Delta function type pulse profile along the surface. It is known that BMS-like symmetries appear as soldering freedom while we glue two spacetimes along a null surface. In this note, we study the effect of such impulsive gravitational waves on test particles (detectors) or geodesics. We show explicitly some measurable effects that depend on BMS-transformation parameters on timelike and null geodesics. BMS-like symmetry parameters carried by the gravitational wave leave some "memory" on test geodesics upon passing through them.
Cite
@article{arxiv.1905.12905,
title = {Memory Effect and BMS-like Symmetries for Impulsive Gravitational Waves},
author = {Srijit Bhattacharjee and Arpan Bhattacharyya and Shailesh Kumar},
journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:1905.12905},
year = {2019}
}
Comments
21 pages, 1 figures, minor modifications to the main text and the abstract, references updated, version to appear in Physical Review D