2024/02/09 by Zuowei Liu, Liu, Zuowei, Zi-Wei Tang +1 · 1 citation
Engineering · Physics and Astronomy · #Atomic and Subatomic Physics Research #FOS: Physical sciences #Gamma-ray bursts and supernovae #General Relativity and Quantum Cosmology (gr-qc) #High Energy Astrophysical Phenomena (astro-ph.HE) #High Energy Physics - Phenomenology (hep-ph) #Photocathodes and Microchannel Plates
paper · pdf · doi:10.48550/arxiv.2402.06209
openalex publication_date 2024/02/09 · openalex created_date 2025/10/10 · openalex updated_date 2026/07/28
Gravitational wave (GW) signals arising from binary neutron star mergers offer new, sensitive probes to ultralight mediators. Here we analyze the GW signals in the GW170817 event detected by the LIGO/Virgo collaboration to impose constraints on the ultralight isospin-violating mediator that has different couplings to protons and neutrons. Neutron stars, which primarily consist of neutrons, are the ideal places to probe the isospin-violating mediator. Such a mediator can significantly alter the dynamics of the binary neutron star mergers, through both the long-range Yukawa force and the new dipole radiation. We compute the gravitational waveform by taking into account the new physics effects due to the isospin-violating mediator and use the Bayesian inference to analyze the gravitational wave data in the GW170817 event. We find that although the current fifth force experiments (including MICROSCOPE and EW) often provide more stringent constraints than the GW170817 data, in the parameter space where the isospin-violating force is completely screened by the Earth (namely, the Earth is charge neutral under this force), the GW170817 data offer the leading constraints: the upper bound on the neutron coupling is fn \lesssim 10-19 in the mediator mass range of ≃(3×10-16, 5×10-14) eV.