Determination of the angular momentum distribution of supernovae from gravitational wave observations

Understand

Significant progress has been made in the development of an international network of gravitational wave detectors, such as TAMA300, LIGO, VIRGO, and GEO600.

• For these detectors, one of the most promising sources of gravitational waves are core collapse supernovae especially in our Galaxy.
• Recent simulations of core collapse supernovae, rigorously carried out by various groups, show that the features of the waveforms are determined by the rotational profiles of the core, such as the rotation rate and the degree of the differential rotation prior to core-collapse.
• Specifically, it has been predicted that the sign of the second largest peak in the gravitational wave strain signal is negative if the core rotates cylindrically with strong differential rotation.