Parametrized parity violation in gravitational wave propagation

Leah Jenks, Lyla Choi, Macarena Lagos, Nicolás Yunes

Research output: Contribution to journalArticlepeer-review

Abstract

Gravitational parity violation arises in a variety of theories beyond general relativity. Gravitational waves in such theories have their propagation altered, leading to birefringence effects in both the amplitude and speed of the wave. In this work, we introduce a generalized, theory-motivated parametrization scheme to study parity violation in gravitational wave propagation. This parametrization maps to parity-violating gravity theories in a straightforward way. We find that the amplitude and velocity birefringence effects scale with an effective distance measure that depends on how the dispersion relation is modified. Furthermore, we show that this generic parametrization can be mapped to the parametrized-post-Einsteinian (ppE) formalism with convenient applications to gravitational wave observations and model-agnostic tests of general relativity. We derive a mapping to the standard ppE waveform of the gravitational wave response function, and also find a ppE waveform mapping at the level of the polarization modes, h+ and h×. Finally, we show how existing constraints in the literature translate to bounds on our new parity-violating parameters and discuss avenues for future analysis.

Original languageEnglish (US)
Article number044023
JournalPhysical Review D
Volume108
Issue number4
DOIs
StatePublished - Aug 15 2023

ASJC Scopus subject areas

  • Nuclear and High Energy Physics

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