Gravitational Wave Polarizations: A Test of General Relativity Using Binary Black Hole Mergers

Gravitational waves;general relativity;computational astrophysics

Mathur, Sudhi ; Weinstein, Alan Jay

University:California Institute of Technology

Department:Physics, Mathematics and Astronomy

关键词: Gravitational waves;    general relativity;    computational astrophysics;   

Others  :  https://thesis.library.caltech.edu/13851/8/Sudhi_thesis.pdf

美国|英语

来源: Caltech THESIS

【 摘 要 】

General Relativity predicts that gravitational radiation is purely tensor polarized and thus, gravitational waves are composed of linear combinations of two transverse polarization modes, referred to as plus (+) and cross (×) tensor modes. However, alternate gravitational theories predict the existence of up to four additional vector and scalar longitudinal GW polarization modes.

In this thesis, we develop a test of the gravitational wave (GW) polarization prediction of general relativity by searching for small admixtures of vector and/or scalar polarization components in transient GWs from binary black hole mergers. We use a network of five non-co-oriented GW detectors available in the near future, Bayesian inference parameter estimation, and nested sampling to quantify the detection sensitivity for such non-tensor GW polarization components.