Standard Gravitational Wave Research Articles

Power spectra and circular polarization of primordial gravitational waves with parity and Lorentz violations

The violations of parity and Lorentz symmetries in gravity can change the propagating properties of gravitational waves (GWs) in the cosmological background, which can arise from a large number of parity- and Lorentz-violating theories. In this paper, through a systematic parametrization for characterizing possible derivations from the standard GW propagation in general relativity, we study both the parity- and Lorentz-violating effects on the power spectra and the polarization of the primordial gravitational waves (PGWs) during the slow-roll inflation. To this end, we calculate explicitly the power spectrum and the corresponding circular polarization of the PGWs analytically by using the uniform asymptotic approximation. It is shown that the new contributions to power spectra contain two parts, one from the parity-violating terms and the other from the Lorentz-violating terms. While the Lorentz-violating terms can only affect the overall amplitudes of PGWs, the parity-violating terms induce nonzero circular polarization of PGWs, i.e., the left-hand and right-hand polarization modes of GWs have different amplitudes.

Finsler gravitational waves of (α, β)-type and their observational signature

We introduce a new class of -type exact solutions in Finsler gravity closely related to the well-known pp-waves in general relativity. Our class contains most of the exact solutions currently known in the literature as special cases. The linearized versions of these solutions may be interpreted as Finslerian gravitational waves, and we investigate the physical effect of such waves. More precisely, we compute the Finslerian correction to the radar distance along an interferometer arm at the moment a Finslerian gravitational wave passes a detector. We come to the remarkable conclusion that the effect of a Finslerian gravitational wave on an interferometer is indistinguishable from that of standard gravitational wave in general relativity. Along the way we also physically motivate a modification of the Randers metric and prove that it has some very interesting properties.

Comparing Instrument Spectral Sensitivity of Dissimilar Electromagnetic Haloscopes to Axion Dark Matter and High Frequency Gravitational Waves

It is known that haloscopes that search for dark matter axions via the axion-photon anomaly are also sensitive to gravitational radiation through the inverse Gertsenshtein effect. Recently this way of searching for high frequency gravitational waves has gained momentum as it has been shown that the strain sensitivity of such detectors, are of the same order of sensitivity to the axion-photon theta angle. Thus, after calculating the sensitivity of a haloscope to an axion signal, we also have calculated the order of magnitude sensitivity to a gravitational wave signal of the same spectral and temporal form. However, it is unlikely that a gravitational wave and an axion signal will be of the same form, since physically the way the signals are generated are completely different. For gravitational wave detection, the spectral strain sensitivity is in units strain per square root Hz, is the natural way to compare the sensitivity of gravitational wave detectors due to its independence on the gravitational wave signal. In this work, we introduce a systematic way to calculate the spectral sensitivity of an axion haloscope, so instrument comparison may be achieved independent of signal assumptions and only depends on the axion to signal transduction sensitivity and noise in the instrument. Thus, the calculation of the spectral sensitivity not only allows the comparison of dissimilar axion detectors independent of signal, but also allows us to compare the order of magnitude gravitational wave sensitivity in terms of spectral strain sensitivity, allowing comparisons to standard gravitational wave detectors based on optical interferometers and resonant-mass technology.

The Role of Longitudinal Polarizations in Horndeski and Macroscopic Gravity: Introducing Gravitational Plasmas

We discuss some general and relevant features of longitudinal gravitational modes in Horndeski gravity and their interaction with matter media. Adopting a gauge-invariant formulation, we clarify how massive scalar and vector fields can induce additional transverse and longitudinal excitations, resulting in breathing, vector, and longitudinal polarizations. We review, then, the interaction of standard gravitational waves with a molecular medium, outlining the emergence of effective massive gravitons, induced by the net quadrupole moment due to molecule deformation. Finally, we investigate the interaction of the massive mode in Horndeski gravity with a noncollisional medium, showing that Landau damping phenomenon can occur in the gravitational sector as well. That allows us to introduce the concept of “gravitational plasma”, where inertial forces associated with the background field play the role of cold ions in electromagnetic plasma.

Observable gravitational waves from tidal disruption events and their electromagnetic counterpart

ABSTRACT We estimate the rate of tidal disruption events (TDEs) that will be detectable with future gravitational wave detectors as well as the most probable properties of these events and their possible electromagnetic counterpart. To this purpose, we combine standard gravitational waves and electromagnetic results with detailed rates estimates. We find that the Laser Interferometer Space Antenna (LISA) should not detect any TDEs, unless black holes (BHs) are typically embedded by a young stellar population, which, in this situation, could lead up to few 10 events during the duration of the mission. If there are gravitational wave observations, these events should also be observable in the X-ray or the optical/UV part of the electromagnetic spectrum, which may open up the multimessenger era for TDEs. The generation of detectors following LISA will at least yearly observe 104 TDEs at cosmological distances, allowing to do population studies and constrain the black hole mass function. In all cases, most probable events should be around black holes with a mass such that the Keplerian frequency at the Schwarzschild radius is similar to the optimal frequency of the detector and with a large penetration factor.

Theoretical priors in scalar-tensor cosmologies: Shift-symmetric Horndeski models

Attempts at constraining theories of late time accelerated expansion often assume broad priors for the parameters in their phenomenological description. Focusing on shift-symmetric scalar-tensor theories with standard gravitational wave speed, we show how a more careful analysis of their dynamical evolution leads to much narrower priors. In doing so, we propose a simple and accurate parametrization of these theories, capturing the redshift dependence of the equation of state, $w(z)$, and the kinetic braiding parameter, ${\ensuremath{\alpha}}_{\mathrm{B}}(z)$, with only two parameters each, and derive their statistical distribution (also known as theoretical priors) that fit the cosmology of the underlying model. We have considered two versions of the shift-symmetric model, one where the energy density of dark energy is given solely by the scalar field and another where it also has a contribution from the cosmological constant. By including current data, we show how theoretical priors can be used to improve constraints by up to an order of magnitude. Moreover, we show that shift-symmetric theories without a cosmological constant are observationally viable. We work up to quartic order in first derivatives of the scalar in the action, and our results suggest this truncation is a good approximation to more general shift-symmetric theories. This work establishes an actionable link between phenomenological parametrizations and Lagrangian-based theories, the two main approaches to test cosmological gravity and cosmic acceleration.

Implications of the Holst term in a f(R) theory with torsion

We analyze a modified $f(R)$ theory of gravity in the Palatini formulation, when an Holst term endowed with a dynamical Immirzi field is included. We study the basic features of the model, especially in view of liminating the torsion field via the Immirzi field and the scalar-tensor degrees of freedom of the $f(R)$ model. The main task of this study is the investigation of the morphology of the gravitational wave polarization when their coupling to a circle of test particles is considered. We first observe that the dynamics of the scalar mode of the $f(R)$ Lagrangian is frozen out, since its first order term identically vanishes. This allows a detailed characterization of the linearized theory, which outlines the emergence of a modified Newtonian potential in the static limit, and when time independence is relaxed a standard gravitational wave plus the scalar wave associated to the Immirzi field. Investigating the effect of the coupling of this scalar-tensor wave on a circle of test particles, we arrive to define two effective gravitational polarizations, corresponding to an equivalent phenomenological wave, whose morphology is anomalous with respect the standard case of General Relativity. In fact, the particle circle suffers modifications as it was subjected to modified plus and cross modes, whose specific features depend on the model free parameters and are, in principle, detectable via a data analysis procedure.

Detecting Lorentz Violations with Gravitational Waves From Black Hole Binaries

Gravitational wave observations have been used to test Lorentz symmetry by looking for dispersive effects that are caused by higher order corrections to the dispersion relation. In this Letter I argue on general grounds that, when such corrections are present, there will also be a scalar excitation. Hence, a smoking-gun observation of Lorentz symmetry breaking would be the direct detection of scalar waves that travel at a speed other than the speed of the standard gravitational wave polarisations or the speed of light. Interestingly, in known Lorentz-breaking gravity theories the difference between the speeds of scalar and tensor waves is virtually unconstrained, whereas the difference between the latter and the speed of light is already severely constrained by the coincident detection of gravitational waves and gamma rays from a binary neutron star merger.

Seeing through the cosmological bounce: Footprints of the contracting phase and luminosity distance in bouncing models

The evolution of the luminosity distance in a contracting universe is studied. It is shown that for quite a lot of natural dynamical evolutions, its behavior is far from trivial and its value can even decrease with an increasing time interval between events. The consequences are investigated and it is underlined that this could both put stringent consistency conditions on bouncing models and open a new observational window on "pre Big Bang" physics using standard gravitational waves.

Implications of a frame dependent gravitational effective action for perturbations on the Robertson–Walker metric

In earlier work we showed that a frame dependent effective action motivated by the postulates of three-space general coordinate invariance and Weyl scaling invariance exactly mimics a cosmological constant in Robertson–Walker (RW) spacetimes. Here we study the implications of this effective action for small fluctuations around a spatially flat RW background geometry. The equations for the conserving extension of the modified stress-energy tensor can be integrated in closed form, and involve only the metric perturbation [Formula: see text]. Hence the equations for tensor and vector perturbations are unmodified, but there are Hubble scale additions to the scalar perturbation equations, which nonetheless admit no propagating wave solutions. Consequently, there are no modifications to standard gravitational wave propagation theory, but there may be observable implications for cosmology. We give a self-contained discussion, including an analysis of the restricted class of gauge transformations that act when a frame dependent effective action is present.

Randall–Sundrum brane Universe as a ground state for Chern–Simons gravity

In stark contrast with the three-dimensional case, higher-dimensional Chern–Simons (CS) theories can have non-topological, propagating degrees of freedom. Finding those vacua that allow for the propagation of linear perturbations, however, proves to be surprisingly challenging. The simplest solutions are somehow ‘hyper-stable’, preventing the construction of realistic, four-dimensional physical models. Here, we show that a Randall–Sundrum (RS) brane Universe can be regarded as a vacuum solution of CS gravity in five-dimensional spacetime, with non vanishing torsion along the dimension perpendicular to the brane. Linearized perturbations around this solution not only exist, but behave as standard gravitational waves on a four-dimensional Minkowski background. In the non-perturbative regime, the solution leads to a four-dimensional ‘cosmological function’ which depends on the Euler density of the brane. Interestingly, the fact that the solution admits nontrivial linear perturbations seems to be related to an often neglected property of the RS spacetime: that it is a group manifold, or, more precisely, two identical group manifolds glued together along the brane. The gravitational theory is then built around this fact, adding the Lorentz generators and one scalar generator needed to close the algebra. In this way, a conjecture emerges: a spacetime that is also a group manifold can be regarded as the ground state of a CS theory for an appropriate Lie algebra.

ELECTROMAGNETIC COUNTERPARTS TO BLACK HOLE MERGERS DETECTED BY LIGO

ABSTRACT Mergers of stellar-mass black holes (BHs), such as GW150914 observed by Laser Interferometer Gravitational Wave Observatory (LIGO), are not expected to have electromagnetic counterparts. However, the Fermi GBM detector identified a γ-ray transient 0.4 s after the gravitational wave (GW) signal GW150914 with consistent sky localization. I show that the two signals might be related if the BH binary detected by LIGO originated from two clumps in a dumbbell configuration that formed when the core of a rapidly rotating massive star collapsed. In that case, the BH binary merger was followed by a γ-ray burst (GRB) from a jet that originated in the accretion flow around the remnant BH. A future detection of a GRB afterglow could be used to determine the redshift and precise localization of the source. A population of standard GW sirens with GRB redshifts would provide a new approach for precise measurements of cosmological distances as a function of redshift.

Vacuum waves

An exact solution of the five-dimensional field equations is studied which describes waves in the classical Einstein vacuum. While the solution is essentially 5D in nature, the waves exist in ordinary 3D space. They should not be confused with standard gravitational waves, since their phase velocity can exceed that of light. They resemble de Broglie waves, and may give insight to wave-particle duality.

A STUDY OF THE DE BROGLIE GRAVITATIONAL WAVES

We study some interesting properties of the de Broglie gravitational waves. In particular, we investigate the properties of the polarization and the energy momentum tensor and the geodesic deviation associated with these waves. We observe that the polarization tensor has both transverse and longitudinal components and depends on the wave number. We find a new effect which does not occur in the standard gravitational waves. Our waves are responsible of a longitudinal shift of test particles placed along the direction of propagation. The amplitude of the shift decreases when the velocity of the source becomes closer to the speed of light; so slow massive particles must be used for an experimental test of the theory.