Gyroscopic gravitational memory

Abstract

We study the motion of a gyroscope located far away from an isolated gravitational source in an asymptotically flat spacetime. As seen from a local frame tied to distant stars, the gyroscope precesses when gravitational waves cross its path, resulting in a net ‘orientation memory’ that carries information on the wave profile. At leading order in the inverse distance to the source, the memory consists of two terms: the first is linear in the metric perturbation and coincides with the spin memory effect, while the second is quadratic and measures the net helicity of the wave burst. Both are closely related to symmetries of the gravitational radiative phase space at null infinity: spin memory probes superrotation charges, while helicity is the canonical generator of local electric-magnetic duality on the celestial sphere.