Gravitational waves: A test for modified gravity

Abstract

In a modified gravity theory, the propagation equation of gravitational waves will be presented in a non-standard way. Therefore this tenor mode perturbation of time-space, as a complement to the scalar mode perturbation, provides a unique character distinguishing modified gravity from general relativity. To avoid the model-dependent issue, in this paper, we propose a parametrised modification to the propagation of gravitational waves. We show the effects on the angular power spectrum of cosmic microwave background radiation due to the parametrised modification and its degeneracy to the tensor mode power spectrum index $n_t$ and its running $\alpha_t$. At last, we report the current status on the detection of modified gravity through the currently available cosmic observations. Our results show no significant deviation to general relativity.