Cosmic shimmering: the gravitational wave signal of time-resolved cosmic shear observations
OA Location
Author(s)
Mentasti, Giorgio
Contaldi, Carlo
Type
preprint
Abstract
We introduce a novel approach for detecting gravitational waves through their influence on the shape of resolved astronomical objects. This method, complementary to pulsar timing arrays and astrometric techniques, explores the time-dependent distortions caused by gravitational waves on the shapes of celestial bodies, such as galaxies or any resolved extended object. By developing a formalism based on that adopted in the analysis of weak lensing effects, we derive the response functions for gravitational wave-induced distortions and compute their angular correlation functions. Our results highlight the sensitivity of these distortions to the lowest frequencies of the gravitational wave spectrum and demonstrate how they produce distinct angular correlation signatures, including null and polarisation-sensitive correlations. These findings pave the way for future high-resolution surveys to exploit this novel observable, potentially offering new insights into the stochastic gravitational wave background and cosmological models.
Date Issued
2024-10-21
Citation
arXiv, 2024
Journal / Book Title
arXiv
Copyright Statement
© 2024 The Author(s).
Identifier
http://arxiv.org/abs/2410.16274v1
Subjects
astro-ph.CO
astro-ph.CO
gr-qc