Gravitational waves from galaxy clusters: a new observable effect

Abstract

A rich galaxy cluster showing strong resemblance with the observed ones is simulated. Cold dark matter spectrum, Gaussian statistics, flat universe, and two components -- baryonic gas plus dark matter particles -- are considered. We have calculated the gravitational-wave output during the epoch of the fully nonlinear and nonsymmetric cluster evolution. The amplitudes and frequencies of the resulting gravitational waves are estimated. Since frequencies are very small --of the order of $10^{-17} Hz$ -- a complete pulse cannot be observed during an admissible integration time; nevertheless, it is proved that these waves can produce an interesting secular effect which appears to be observable with current technology.