Speaker
Description
Along with a neutrino signal, core-collapse supernovae are expected to produce gravitational waves. In analogy to the diffuse supernova neutrino background (DSNB), a stochastic gravitational wave background (SGWB) is predicted to originate from proto-neutron star (PNS) oscillations and hydrodynamical instabilities in unresolved core-collapse supernovae. General relativity predicts that there is also a low-frequency component to the SGWB signal arising from the anisotropic emission of supernova neutrinos: the gravitational wave memory effect. Here, we characterize the SGWB due to supernova neutrino memory over a range of frequencies using a phenomenological model fit to state-of-the-art 3D simulations capturing the first several seconds of supernovae originating from a range of progenitor masses. Our model accounts for long-term accumulation of gravitational wave memory as well as mass differences in the stellar population. We compare our predicted SGWB from supernova neutrino memory to a phenomenological model of the supernova SGWB arising from PNS oscillations and hydrodynamical instabilities and find that the supernova neutrino memory signal occupies a distinct frequency band. Observation of such a signal could reveal population-level information about anisotropies in neutrino emission during core-collapse and could provide a new channel by which to investigate the initial mass function (IMF) describing the distribution of stellar masses during star formation.