2008/10/30 by J. Näf, Joachim Näf, P. Jetzer +2
Physics and Astronomy · #Amplitude #Black Holes and Theoretical Physics #Classical mechanics #Cosmological constant #Cosmology and Gravitation Theories #De Sitter universe #Einstein #Einstein Telescope #Gravitation #Gravitational wave #LIGO #Lambda #Mathematical physics #Physics #Polarization (electrochemistry) #Pulsars and Gravitational Waves Research #Quantum mechanics #Spacetime #Universe #astro-ph #gr-qc
paper · pdf · doi:10.1103/physrevd.79.024014
published as Phys.Rev.D79:024014,2009 · 8 pages, 4 figures, accepted for publication in Physical Review D
arxiv created 2008/10/30 · openalex publication_date 2009/01/21 · arxiv updated 2009/12/01 · openalex created_date 2025/10/10 · openalex updated_date 2026/08/05
We study the effect of a cosmological constant \ensuremathΛ on the propagation and detection of gravitational waves. To this purpose we investigate the linearized Einstein's equations with terms up to linear order in \ensuremathΛ in a de Sitter and an anti-de Sitter background spacetime. In this framework the cosmological term does not induce changes in the polarization states of the waves, whereas the amplitude gets modified with terms depending on \ensuremathΛ. Moreover, if a source emits a periodic waveform, its periodicity as measured by a distant observer gets modified. These effects are, however, extremely tiny and thus well below the detectability by some 20 orders of magnitude within present gravitational wave detectors such as LIGO or future planned ones such as LISA.