Fundamental physics implications on higher-curvature theories from the binary black hole signals in the LIGO-Virgo Catalog GWTC-1

2019/05/31 by Remya Nair, Scott Perkins, Hector O. Silva +1 · 1 citation
Physics and Astronomy · #gr-qc #astro-ph.CO #hep-th

paper · pdf · doi:10.1103/physrevlett.123.191101

published as Phys. Rev. Lett. 123, 191101 (2019) · v1: 6 pages, 1 figure. v2: matches published version. v3: errors corrected in Eq. (3) and Table I

arxiv created 2020/04/02 · arxiv updated 2020/04/06

Abstract

Gravitational-wave astronomy offers not only new vistas into the realm of astrophysics, but it also opens an avenue for probing, for the first time, general relativity in its strong-field, nonlinear, and dynamical regime, where the theory's predictions manifest themselves in their full glory. We present a study of whether the gravitational wave events detected so far by the LIGO-Virgo scientific collaborations can be used to probe higher-curvature corrections to general relativity. In particular, we focus on two examples: Einstein-dilaton-Gauss-Bonnet and dynamical Chern-Simons gravity. We find that the two events with a low-mass m ≈ 7 M_\odot BH (GW151226 and GW170608) place stringent constraints on Einstein-dilaton-Gauss-Bonnet gravity, α^1/2_{\rm EdGB} \lesssim 5.6 km, whereas dynamical Chern-Simons gravity remains unconstrained by the gravitational-wave observations analyzed.

Cited by

• Dynamics and gravitational radiation of binaries with spin precession and eccentricity in dynamical Chern-Simons gravity