Prospects of detecting the nonlinear gravitational wave memory

Abstract

In GW150914, approximately $3M_{\odot}$ were radiated away as gravitational waves from the binary black hole system as it merged. The stress energy of the gravitational wave itself causes a nonlinear memory effect in the detectors here on Earth called the Christodoulou memory. We use an approximation that can be applied to numerical relativity waveforms to give an estimate of the displacement magnitude and the profile of the nonlinear memory. We give a signal to noise ratio for a single GW150914-like detection event, and by varying the total mass and distance parameters of the event, we find distances and source masses for which the memory of an optimally oriented GW150914-like event would be detectable in aLIGO and future detectors.