Constraints on the Nieh-Yan modified teleparallel gravity with gravitational waves

Abstract

The discovery of gravitational waves (GWs) from the compact binary components by LIGO/Virgo Collaboration provides an unprecedented opportunity for testing gravity in the strong and highlydynamical field regime of gravity. Currently a lot of model-independent tests have been performed by LIGO/Virgo Collaboration and no any significant derivation from general relativity has been found. In this paper, we study the parity violating effects on the propagation of GWs in the Nieh-Yan modified teleparallel gravity, a theory which modifies general relativity by a parity violating Nieh-Yan term. We calculate the corresponding parity violating waveform of GWs produced by the coalescence of compact binaries. By comparing the two circular polarization modes, we find the effects of the velocity birefringence of GWs in their propagation caused by the parity violation due to the Nieh-Yan term, which are explicitly presented in the GW waveforms by the phase modification. With such phase modifications to the waveform, we perform the full Bayesian inference with the help of the open source software Bilby on the GW events of binary black hole merges (BBH) in the LIGO-Virgo catalogs GWTC-1 and GWTC-2. We do not find any significant evidence of parity violation due to the parity violating Nieh-Yan term and thus place an upper bound a on the energy scale MPV < 6.5 × 10 −42 GeV at 90% confidence level, which represents the first constraint on the Nieh-Yan modified teleparallel gravity so far.

Ghost instability in the teleparallel gravity model with parity violations

“…More recently, this model was found to be compatible with the results of most local tests in the Solar System at the post-Newtonian order [17,18], the upper limit on its model parameters by the GWs data of LIGO/Virgo Collaboration was obtained in Ref. [19], and the enhancement of primordial GWs during inflation due to the velocity birefringence of NYTG model and its implications in the air-based GWs experiments were studied in Ref. [20].…”

Axion gravitodynamics, Lense-Thirring effect, and gravitational waves

“…Note added. While this work was being finalised, we learned of the preprint [45] which has some overlap with our discussion on gravitational waves and a proposal for a stronger bound on the parameters of the theory based on phase velocities.…”

Gravitational wave constraints on Lorentz and parity violations in gravity: high-order spatial derivative cases

“…In this paper we will consider the velocity birefringence effects only. With the GW events detected by LIGO and Virgo, the GW constraints on the parity-violating birefringence for β µ = 1 [60,61] and β µ = −1 [62] have been obtained by comparing the modified waveforms with GW data. With these constraints, one is able to infer the gravitational wave constraints on the corresponding parity-violating gravities.…”

“…For GW190814 and GW190521, we employ the waveform IMRPhenomXPHM which includes the subdominant harmonic modes of GW and accounts for spin-precession effects for a quasi-circular-orbit binary black hole coalescence. The explanation of parameter vector θ for these waveform templates can be found in [5,62].…”