2018/07/23 by Kris Pardo, M. Fishbach, D. E. Holz +1 · 3 citations
Physics and Astronomy · #Pulsars and Gravitational Waves Research #Cosmology and Gravitation Theories #Astrophysics and Cosmic Phenomena
paper · doi:10.1088/1475-7516/2018/07/048
openalex publication_date 2018/07/23 · openalex created_date 2025/10/10 · openalex updated_date 2026/07/30
The observation of GW170817 in both gravitational and electromagnetic waves provides a number of unique tests of general relativity. One question we can answer with this event is: do large-wavelength gravitational waves and short-frequency photons experience the same number of spacetime dimensions? In models that include additional non-compact spacetime dimensions, as the gravitational waves propagate, they "leak" into the extra dimensions, leading to a reduction in the amplitude of the observed gravitational waves, and a commensurate systematic error in the inferred distance to the gravitational wave source. Electromagnetic waves would remain unaffected. We compare the inferred distance to GW170817 from the observation of gravitational waves, d L GW , with the inferred distance to the electromagnetic counterpart NGC 4993, d L EM . We constrain d L GW = ( d L EM /Mpc) γ with γ = 1.01 +0.04 −0.05 (for the SHoES value of H 0 ) or γ = 0.99 +0.03 −0.05 (for the Planck value of H 0 ), where all values are MAP and minimal 68% credible intervals. These constraints imply that gravitational waves propagate in D =3+1 spacetime dimensions, as expected in general relativity. In particular, we find that D = 4.02 +0.07 −0.10 (SHoES) and D = 3.98 +0.07 −0.09 (Planck). Furthermore, we place limits on the screening scale for theories with D >4 spacetime dimensions, finding that the screening scale must be greater than ∼ 20 Mpc. We also place a lower limit on the lifetime of the graviton of t > 4.50 × 10 8 yr.