Fundamental Physics Implications for Higher-Curvature Theories from Binary Black Hole Signals in the LIGO-Virgo Catalog GWTC-1

Remya Nair; Scott Perkins; Hector O Silva; Nicolás Yunes

doi:10.1103/PhysRevLett.123.191101

Fundamental Physics Implications for Higher-Curvature Theories from Binary Black Hole Signals in the LIGO-Virgo Catalog GWTC-1

Phys Rev Lett. 2019 Nov 8;123(19):191101. doi: 10.1103/PhysRevLett.123.191101.

Authors

Remya Nair¹, Scott Perkins^{1

2}, Hector O Silva^{1

2}, Nicolás Yunes^{1

2}

Affiliations

¹ eXtreme Gravity Institute, Department of Physics, Montana State University, Bozeman, Montana 59717, USA.
² Department of Physics, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, Urbana, Illinois 61801, USA.

PMID: 31765188
DOI: 10.1103/PhysRevLett.123.191101

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_{⊙} BH (GW151226 and GW170608) place stringent constraints on Einstein-dilaton-Gauss-Bonnet gravity, α_{EDGB}^{1/2}≲5.6 km, whereas dynamical Chern-Simons gravity remains unconstrained by the gravitational-wave observations analyzed.