2016/06/23 by Alexander Tolish, Robert M. Wald · 61 citations
Mathematics · Physics and Astronomy · #Astrophysics #Black Holes and Theoretical Physics #Classical mechanics #Cosmology #Cosmology and Gravitation Theories #Dark energy #Friedmann–Lemaître–Robertson–Walker metric #Galaxies: Formation, Evolution, Phenomena #Geometry #Gravitation #Luminosity distance #Mathematical physics #Mathematics #Metric expansion of space #Minkowski space #Physics #Quantum mechanics #Scalar (mathematics) #Scale factor (cosmology) #Spacetime #Theoretical physics #gr-qc #hep-th
paper · pdf · doi:10.1103/physrevd.94.044009
published in Physical review. D/Physical review. D. 94(4) (American Physical Society) · 22 pages, 1 figure. Eqs (53)-(55) have been corrected
arxiv created 2016/06/23 · openalex publication_date 2016/08/08 · arxiv updated 2016/08/17 · openalex created_date 2025/10/10 · openalex updated_date 2026/08/06
The ``memory effect'' is the permanent change in the relative separation of test particles resulting from the passage of gravitational radiation. We investigate the memory effect for a general, spatially flat Friedmann-Lema\\itre-Robertson-Walker (FLRW) cosmology by considering the radiation associated with emission events involving particle-like sources. We find that if the resulting perturbation is decomposed into scalar, vector, and tensor parts, only the tensor part contributes to memory. Furthermore, the tensor contribution to memory depends only on the cosmological scale factor at the source and observation events, not on the detailed expansion history of the universe. In particular, for sources at the same luminosity distance, the memory effect in a spatially flat FLRW spacetime is enhanced over the Minkowski case by a factor of (1+z).