Constraining alternative theories of gravity by gravitational waves from precessing eccentric compact binaries with LISA

2009/06/30 by Kent Yagi, Takahiro Tanaka · 3 citations
Physics and Astronomy · #Astrophysics #Binary black hole #Black Holes and Theoretical Physics #Black hole (networking) #Compton scattering #Compton wavelength #Cosmology and Gravitation Theories #Eccentricity (behavior) #Gravitation #Gravitational wave #Graviton #Mathematical physics #Neutron star #Omega #Photon #Physics #Precession #Pulsars and Gravitational Waves Research #Quantum mechanics #astro-ph.CO #gr-qc

paper · pdf · doi:10.1103/physrevd.81.064008

published as Phys.Rev.D81:064008,2010; Erratum-ibid.D81:109902,2010 · 35 pages, 17 figures; some corrections have been made on the Monte Carlo simulations for the massive graviton case; corresponding tables and figures have been replaced, but the major result almost unchanged.

openalex publication_date 2010/03/05 · arxiv created 2010/05/13 · arxiv updated 2014/11/20 · openalex created_date 2016/06/24 · openalex updated_date 2026/07/28

Abstract

We calculate how strongly one can put constraints on alternative theories of gravity such as Brans-Dicke and massive graviton theories with LISA. We consider inspiral gravitational waves from a compact binary composed of a neutron star and an intermediate mass black hole in Brans-Dicke (BD) theory and that composed of a super massive black hole in massive graviton theories. We use the restricted second post-Newtonian waveforms including the effects of spins. We also take both precession and eccentricity of the orbit into account. For simplicity, we set the fiducial value for the spin of one of the binary constituents to zero so that we can apply the approximation called simple precession. We perform the Monte Carlo simulations of 10⁴ binaries, estimating the determination accuracy of binary parameters including the BD parameter \ensuremathω_BD and the Compton wavelength of graviton \ensuremathλ_g for each binary using the Fisher matrix method. We find that including both the spin-spin coupling \ensuremathσ and the eccentricity e into the binary parameters reduces the determination accuracy by an order of magnitude for the Brans-Dicke case, while it has less influence on massive graviton theories. On the other hand, including precession enhances the constraint on \ensuremathω_BD only 20% but it increases the constraint on \ensuremathλ_g by several factors. Using a (1.4+1000)M_\ensuremath\bigodot neutron star/black hole binary of SNR=√(200), one can put a constraint \ensuremathω_BD>6944, while using a (10⁷+10⁶)M_\ensuremath\bigodot black hole/black hole binary at 3 Gpc, one can put \ensuremathλ_g>3.10\ifmmode×\else\texttimes\fi10²¹ cm, on average. The latter is 4 orders of magnitude stronger than the one obtained from the solar system experiment. These results are consistent with previous results within uncontrolled errors and indicate that the effects of precession and eccentricity must be taken carefully in the parameter estimation analysis.

Citations

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Cited by

• Growth of a Black Hole in a Scalar Field Cosmology
• SPIN-PRECESSION: BREAKING THE BLACK HOLE-NEUTRON STAR DEGENERACY
• SCIENTIFIC POTENTIAL OF DECIGO PATHFINDER AND TESTING GR WITH SPACE-BORNE GRAVITATIONAL WAVE INTERFEROMETERS