2010/01/11 by Eva Sagi
Physics and Astronomy · #Black Holes and Theoretical Physics #Cosmology and Gravitation Theories #Pulsars and Gravitational Waves Research #gr-qc
paper · pdf · doi:10.1103/physrevd.81.064031
published as Phys.Rev.D81:064031,2010 · 9 pages; submitted to PRD
arxiv created 2010/01/11 · openalex publication_date 2010/03/24 · arxiv updated 2010/05/12 · openalex created_date 2016/06/24 · openalex updated_date 2026/07/28
Efforts are underway to improve the design and sensitivity of gravitational wave detectors, with the hope that the next generation of these detectors will observe a gravitational wave signal. Such a signal will not only provide information on dynamics in the strong gravity regime that characterizes potential sources of gravitational waves, but will also serve as a decisive test for alternative theories of gravitation that are consistent with all other current experimental observations. We study the linearized theory of the tensor-vector-scalar theory of gravity with generalized vector action, an alternative theory of gravitation designed to explain the apparent deficit of visible matter in galaxies and clusters of galaxies without postulating yet-undetected dark matter. We find the polarization states and propagation speeds for gravitational waves in vacuum, and show that in addition to the usual transverse-traceless propagation modes, there are two more mixed longitudinal-transverse modes and two trace modes, of which at least one has longitudinal polarization. Additionally, the propagation speeds are different from the speed of light.