Gravitational Waves from Core-Collapse Supernovae

New Repository of Theoretical 3D Gravitational Wave Signatures from Supernovae:

Abstract from the paper The Gravitational-Wave Signature of Core-Collapse Supernovae by David Vartanyan, Adam Burrows, Tianshu Wang, Matthew Coleman, and Christopher White; published in Physical Review D:

We calculate the gravitational-wave (GW) signatures of detailed 3D core-collapse supernova simulations spanning a range of massive stars. For the first time, most of the published simulations were carried out to times late enough to capture more than 99 percent of the total GW emission. We find that the f/g-mode and f-mode of proto-neutron star oscillations carry away most of the GW power. The f-mode frequency inexorably rises as the proto-neutron star core shrinks. We demonstrate that the GW emission is powered mostly by accretion plumes onto the PNS that excite its modal oscillations and also produce a ``haze" of higher frequency emission correlated with the phase of violent accretion. The duration of the major phase of emission varies with exploding progenitor and there is a strong correlation between the total GW energy radiated and the compactness of the progenitor. Moreover, the total GW emissions vary by as much as three orders of magnitude from star to star. For black-hole formation, the GW signal tapers off slowly and does not manifest the haze seen for the exploding models. For these models, we also witness the emergence of a spiral shock motion that modulates the GW emission at a frequency near ~100 Hz that slowly increases as the stalled shock sinks. We find that the angular anisotropy of the higher-frequency GW emissions varies with angle by ~10 percent, while the matter and neutrino memory signatures, seen only for the exploding models, have much larger strains, though very little power.

Below are the gravitational wave (GW) strain data from that new paper. For each model, we give the GW strain signal due to the matter terms alone, neutrino memory is not included in these files at the moment, though it was calculated for all models. The data are in ASCII format and the three columns are

1:time time since bounce in sec

2:hplus plus polarization in the positive x-axis direction of the GW strain times distance in cm

3:hcross cross polarization in the positive x-axis direction of the GW strain times distance in cm

The strain data are sampled at high cadence, but due to timestep fluctuations in the simulation, the sampling is not perfectly uniform in time. Therefore resampling might be necessary.


3D GW h+, hx: 9_BW solar masses

3D GW h+, hx: 9_TH solar masses

3D GW h+, hx: 9_a solar masses

3D GW h+, hx: 9_b solar masses

3D GW h+, hx: 11 solar masses

3D GW h+, hx: 12.25 solar masses

3D GW h+, hx: 14 solar masses

3D GW h+, hx: 15.01 solar masses

3D GW h+, hx: 23 solar masses

3D GW h+, hx: 9.25 solar masses

3D GW h+, hx: 9.5 solar masses


9a sonification

9b sonification

9.5 sonification

11 sonification

14 sonification

15.01 sonification

23 sonification


All the strain files