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Outlook for detecting the gravitational wave displacement and spin memory effects with current and future gravitational wave detectors

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arxiv 2210.16266 v4 pith:DDZ46ZEV submitted 2022-10-28 gr-qc astro-ph.HEhep-th

classification gr-qcastro-ph.HEhep-th
keywords memoryeffectsdetecteddisplacementgravitationalligospinvirgo
verification ladder T0 review T1 audit T2 compute T3 formal
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Gravitational wave memory effects arise from non-oscillatory components of gravitational wave signals, and they are predictions of general relativity in the nonlinear regime that have close connections to the asymptotic properties of isolated gravitating systems. There are many types of memory effects that have been studied in the literature. In this paper we focus on the "displacement" and "spin" memories, which are expected to be the largest of these effects from sources such as the binary black hole mergers which have already been detected by LIGO and Virgo. The displacement memory is a change in the relative separation of two initially comoving observers due to a burst of gravitational waves, whereas the spin memory is a portion of the change in relative separation of observers with initial relative velocity. As both of these effects are small, LIGO, Virgo, and KAGRA can only detect memory effects from individual events that are much louder (and thus rarer) than those that have been detected so far. By combining data from multiple events, however, these effects could be detected in a population of binary mergers. In this paper, we present new forecasts for how long current and future detectors will need to operate in order to measure these effects from populations of binary black hole systems that are consistent with the populations inferred from the detections from LIGO and Virgo's first three observing runs. We find that a second-generation detector network of LIGO, Virgo, and KAGRA operating at the O4 ("design") sensitivity for 1.5 years and then operating at the O5 ("plus") sensitivity for an additional year can detect the displacement memory. For Cosmic Explorer, we find that displacement memory could be detected for individual loud events, and that the spin memory could be detected in a population within 2 years of observation time.

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Cited by 7 Pith papers

Reviewed papers in the Pith corpus that reference this work. Sorted by Pith novelty score. Full citation record

  1. The Persistence of Nonlinear Gravitational Wave Memory

    gr-qc 2025-06 conditional novelty 8.0 of 10

    Nonlinear gravitational wave memory is not permanent for a fixed observer: it decays as one over the time since the burst, though it remains permanent at future null infinity.

  2. Scalar memory from compact binary coalescences

    gr-qc 2026-05 conditional novelty 7.0 of 10

    In Ricci-coupled scalar-Gauss-Bonnet gravity, the change in scalar charge during binary black hole mergers generates a scalar memory contribution that modifies the total memory signal on observable timescales.

  3. Memory effect from the scattering of Taub-NUT black holes

    hep-th 2026-03 conditional novelty 7.0 of 10

    Soft theorems yield a gauge-invariant nutty soft factor and the associated memory tensor for Kerr-Taub-NUT scattering, with magnetic components and directional divergences absent in electromagnetism.

  4. Gravitational lensing of gravitational waves: universal characteristics of strongly lensed memory waveforms

    gr-qc 2025-10 conditional novelty 7.0 of 10

    Strongly lensed gravitational-wave memory waveforms acquire universal parity signatures—odd for type I/III images, even for type II—that can identify image type via a simple step-function approximation.

  5. Nonlinear Gravitational Memory in the Post-Minkowskian Expansion

    hep-th 2025-06 conditional novelty 7.0 of 10

    Exact-in-velocity formulas for the O(G^3) nonlinear gravitational memory multipoles from two-body scattering, derived with scattering amplitudes and reverse unitarity, and matched to post-Newtonian results.

  6. Sound as a gauge theory and its infrared triangle

    hep-th 2025-12 conditional novelty 6.0 of 10

    Linear acoustic perturbations admit a memory effect that, in a dual Kalb-Ramond formulation, is encoded by large gauge transformations plus a monopole piece.

  7. A stepping stone toward detecting gravitational wave memory: a cumulative analysis with the full $(\ell=2, m=0)$ spherical harmonic using events from GWTC-4.0 and GWTC-5.0

    gr-qc 2026-07 conditional novelty 5.5 of 10

    Cumulative log10 Bayes factor of 1.38±0.79 favors the full (2,0) mode in GWTC-4.0; decisive evidence is projected to need ~166 events under optimistic assumptions.

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