Gravitational radiation from binary systems in massive graviton theories

Abstract

Theories with massive gravitons have peculiarity called the van Dam-Veltman-Zakharov discontinuity in that the massive theory propagator does not go to the massless graviton propagator in the zero graviton mass limit. This results in large deviation in Newtons law for massive graviton theories even when the graviton mass vanishes. We test the vDVZ in massive graviton theories for single graviton vertex process namely the gravitational radiation from a classical source.We calculate the gravitational radiation from compact binaries using the perturbative Feynman diagram method. We perform this calculation for Einstein's gravity with massless gravitons and verify that the Feynman diagram calculation reproduces the quadrupole formula. Using the same procedure we calculate the gravitational radiation for three massive graviton theories: (1) the Fierz-Pauli theory (2) the modified Fierz-Pauli theory without the vDVZ discontinuity and (3) the Dvali-Gabadadze-Porrati theory with a momentum dependent graviton mass. We put limits on the graviton mass in each of these theories from observations of binary pulsar timings.