The NANOGrav 15-year Data Set: Search for Gravitational Wave Memory
General Relativity and Quantum Cosmology
2025-03-04 v2
Abstract
We present the results of a search for nonlinear gravitational wave memory in the NANOGrav 15-year data set. We find no significant evidence for memory signals in the dataset, with a maximum Bayes factor of 3.1 in favor of a model including memory. We therefore place upper limits on the strain of potential gravitational wave memory events as a function of sky location and observing epoch. We find upper limits that are not always more constraining than previous NANOGrav results. We show that it is likely due to the increase in common red noise between the 12.5-year and 15-year NANOGrav datasets.
Cite
@article{arxiv.2502.18599,
title = {The NANOGrav 15-year Data Set: Search for Gravitational Wave Memory},
author = {Gabriella Agazie and Akash Anumarlapudi and Anne M. Archibald and Zaven Arzoumanian and Jeremy G. Baier and Paul T. Baker and Bence Becsy and Laura Blecha and Adam Brazier and Paul R. Brook and Sarah Burke-Spolaor and Rand Burnette and J. Andrew Casey-Clyde and Maria Charisi and Shami Chatterjee and Tyler Cohen and James M. Cordes and Neil J. Cornish and Fronefield Crawford and H. Thankful Cromartie and Kathryn Crowter and Megan E. DeCesar and Paul B. Demorest and Heling Deng and Lankeswar Dey and Timothy Dolch and Elizabeth C. Ferrara and William Fiore and Emmanuel Fonseca and Gabriel E. Freedman and Emiko C. Gardiner and Nate Garver-Daniels and Peter A. Gentile and Kyle A. Gersbach and Joseph Glaser and Deborah C. Good and Kayhan Gultekin and Jeffrey S. Hazboun and Ross J. Jennings and Aaron D. Johnson and Megan L. Jones and David L. Kaplan and Luke Zoltan Kelley and Matthew Kerr and Joey S. Key and Nima Laal and Michael T. Lam and William G. Lamb and Bjorn Larsen and T. Joseph W. Lazio and Natalia Lewandowska and Tingting Liu and Duncan R. Lorimer and Jing Luo and Ryan S. Lynch and Chung-Pei Ma and Dustin R. Madison and Alexander McEwen and James W. McKee and Maura A. McLaughlin and Natasha McMann and Bradley W. Meyers and Patrick M. Meyers and Chiara M. F. Mingarelli and Andrea Mitridate and Priyamvada Natarajan and Cherry Ng and David J. Nice and Stella Koch Ocker and Ken D. Olum and Timothy T. Pennucci and Benetge B. P. Perera and Polina Petrov and Nihan S. Pol and Henri A. Radovan and Scott M. Ransom and Paul S. Ray and Jessie C. Runnoe and Alexander Saffer and Shashwat C. Sardesai and Ann Schmiedekamp and Carl Schmiedekamp and Kai Schmitz and Brent J. Shapiro-Albert and Xavier Siemens and Joseph Simon and Magdalena S. Siwek and Sophia V. Sosa Fiscella and Ingrid H. Stairs and Daniel R. Stinebring and Kevin Stovall and Jerry P. Sun and Abhimanyu Susobhanan and Joseph K. Swiggum and Jacob Taylor and Stephen R. Taylor and Jacob E. Turner and Caner Unal and Michele Vallisneri and Rutger van Haasteren and Sarah J. Vigeland and Haley M. Wahl and Caitlin A. Witt and David Wright and Olivia Young},
journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:2502.18599},
year = {2025}
}