In this paper we introduce a new approach to the study of the effects that an impulsive wave, containing a mixture of material sources and gravitational waves, has on a geodesic congruence that traverses it. We find that the effect of the wave on the
congruence is a discontinuity in the B-tensor of the congruence. Our results thus provide a detector independent and covariant characterization of gravitational memory.
Gravitational-wave memory manifests as a permanent distortion of an idealized gravitational-wave detector and arises generically from energetic astrophysical events. For example, binary black hole mergers are expected to emit memory bursts a little m
ore than an order of magnitude smaller in strain than the oscillatory parent waves. We introduce the concept of orphan memory: gravitational-wave memory for which there is no detectable parent signal. In particular, high-frequency gravitational-wave bursts ($gtrsim$ kHz) produce orphan memory in the LIGO/Virgo band. We show that Advanced LIGO measurements can place stringent limits on the existence of high-frequency gravitational waves, effectively increasing the LIGO bandwidth by orders of magnitude. We investigate the prospects for and implications of future searches for orphan memory.
Circularly polarized gravitational sandwich waves exhibit, as do their linearly polarized counterparts, the Velocity Memory Effect: freely falling test particles in the flat after-zone fly apart along straight lines with constant velocity. In the ins
ide zone their trajectories combine oscillatory and rotational motions in a complicated way. For circularly polarized periodic gravitational waves some trajectories remain bounded, while others spiral outward. These waves admit an additional screw isometry beyond the usual five. The consequences of this extra symmetry are explored.
We give an account of the gravitational memory effect in the presence of the exact plane wave solution of Einsteins vacuum equations. This allows an elementary but exact description of the soft gravitons and how their presence may be detected by obse
rving the motion of freely falling particles. The theorem of Bondi and Pirani on caustics (for which we present a new proof) implies that the asymptotic relative velocity is constant but not zero, in contradiction with the permanent displacement claimed by Zeldovich and Polnarev. A non-vanishing asymptotic relative velocity might be used to detect gravitational waves through the velocity memory effect, considered by Braginsky, Thorne, Grishchuk, and Polnarev.
We argue that near-future detections of gravitational waves from merging black hole binaries can test a long-standing proposal, originally due Bekenstein and Mukhanov, that the areas of black hole horizons are quantized in integer multiples of the Pl
anck area times an $mathcal O(1)$ dimensionless constant $alpha$. This condition quantizes the frequency of radiation that can be absorbed or emitted by a black hole. If this quantization applies to the ring down gravitational radiation emitted immediately after a black hole merger, a single measurement consistent with the predictions of classical general relativity would rule out most or all (depending on the spin of the hole) of the extant proposals in the literature for the value of $alpha$. A measurement of two such events for final black holes with substantially different spins would rule out the proposal for any $alpha$. If the modification of general relativity is confined to the near-horizon region within the holes light ring and does not affect the initial ring down signal, a detection of echoes with characteristic properties could still confirm the proposal.