Registration of gravitational waves emitted by periodic astrophysical sources: prospects for GW-astronomy and stellar navigation

Abstract

Abstract All the efforts to directly detect the gravitational waves (GW), including the recent successes of the LIGO and VIRGO teams, are focused on registering the catastrophic events in deep space. The two main features of this activity are the unpredictability of these events and the extreme sensitivity of the necessary equipment. The principally new method of the GW detection is based on the effect of optic-metrical parametric resonance (OMPR) and does not require catastrophic events and supersensitive equipment. The corresponding theory shows that the periodic GW, emitted by a short-period binary star, acts on a distant astrophysical maser and produces a specific signal that can be registered by a regular radio telescope. The main feature of such signal is the periodic change of the intensity of the only one detail in a maser’s spectrum. The observations of 49 such masers were performed with the RT-22 radio telescope at Pushchino Observatory of RAS. The program of signal processing included the identification of periodic components in a spectrum, the elimination of artifacts associated with the observation procedure, and the determination of the frequencies of periodic components. After that the corresponding binary stellar systems were identified. Thus, close binaries become a kind of GW-beacons in the Milky Way. This gives rise to the GW-astronomy, provides obvious applications for stellar navigation and gives a clue to the study of the geometric structure of our galaxy.