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. The gluing of two spacetimes across a null surface produces impulsive gravitational waves (in the phraseology of Penrose) having a Dirac Delta function type pulse profile along the surface. It is known that Bondi-van der Burg-Matzner-Sachs (BMS)-like symmetries appear as soldering freedom while we glue two spacetimes along a null surface. In this paper, 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.
Shailesh Kumar
Postdoctoral Fellow
I am currently working as a Post-Docotral Fellow (N-PDF) at the Indian Institute of Technology, Gandhinagar, India. My research interest encompasses various aspects of gravitation theory, broadly black holes and gravitational waves. I am currently working on projects related to black hole perturbation techniques, extreme mass-ratio inspirals (EMRIs), tidal effects and post-Newtonian framework. My work during the PhD provides an understanding of the gravitational memory effect emerging near the horizon of black holes and its connection with asymptotic symmetries. I am also exploring the possibilities to have observational signatures of such symmetries.