A phase shift of gravitational waves induced by aberration

Alejandro Torres-Orjuela, Xian Chen, Pau Amaro-Seoane

Published 2020-01-03Version 1

The velocity of a gravitational wave (GW) source provides crucial information about its formation and evolution processes. Previous studies considered the Doppler effect on the phase of GWs as a potential means to detect a time-dependent velocity of the source. However, the Doppler shift only accounts for the time component of the wave vector, and in principle motion also affects the spatial components. The latter effect, known as "aberration'' for light, is analyzed in this Letter for GWs and applied to the waveform modeling of an accelerating source. We show that the additional aberrational phase shift could be detectable in two astrophysical scenarios, namely, a recoiling binary black hole (BBH) due to GW radiation and a BBH in a triple system. Our results suggest that adding the aberrational phase shift in the waveform templates could significantly enhance the detectability of moving sources.