Prospects for true calorimetry on Kerr black holes in core-collapse supernovae and mergers

Observational evidence for black hole spin down has been found in the normalized light curves of long gamma-ray bursts in the BATSE catalog. Over the duration T{sub 90} of the burst, matter swept up by the central black hole is susceptible to nonaxisymmetries, producing gravitational radiation with a negative chirp. A time-sliced matched filtering method is introduced to capture phase coherence on intermediate time scales, {tau}, here tested by the injection of templates into experimental strain noise, h{sub n}(t). For TAMA 300, h{sub n}(f){approx_equal}10{sup -21} Hz{sup -1/2} at f=1 kHz gives a sensitivity distance for a reasonably accurate extraction of the trajectory in the time-frequency domain of about D{approx_equal}0.07-0.10 Mpc for the spin down of black holes of mass M=10-12M{sub {center_dot}} with {tau}=1 s. Extrapolation to advanced detectors implies D{approx_equal}35-50 Mpc for h{sub n}(f){approx_equal}2x10{sup -24} Hz{sup -1/2} around 1 kHz, which will open a new window to rigorous calorimetry on Kerr black holes.