Gravitational Waves from Galaxy Clusters: A New Observable Effect

A rich galaxy cluster showing strong resemblance to the observed ones is simulated. A cold dark matter spectrum, Gaussian statistics, a flat universe, and two components (baryonic gas plus dark matter particles) are considered. We have calculated the gravitational-wave output during the epoch of the fully nonlinear and nonsymmetric cluster evolution. The amplitudes and frequencies of the resulting gravitational waves are estimated. Since frequencies are very small—of the order of 10-17 Hz—a complete pulse cannot be observed during an admissible integration time; nevertheless, it is proved that these waves can produce an interesting secular effect, which appears to be observable with current technology.