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Tests of Gravitational-Wave Birefringence with the Open Gravitational-Wave Catalog

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arxiv 2109.09718 v4 pith:BHKKSMZW submitted 2021-09-20 astro-ph.HE gr-qc

classification astro-ph.HEgr-qc
keywords gravitational-wavebirefringenceeventsresultsgw190521massivecatalogevent
verification ladder T0 review T1 audit T2 compute T3 formal
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abstract

We report the results of testing gravitational-wave birefringence using the largest population of gravitational-wave events currently available. Gravitational-wave birefringence, which can arise from the effective field theory extension of general relativity, occurs when the parity symmetry is broken, causing the left- and right-handed polarizations to propagate following different equations of motion. We perform Bayesian inference on the 94 events reported by the 4th-Open Gravitational-wave Catalog (4-OGC) using a parity-violating waveform. We find no evidence for a violation of general relativity in the vast majority of events. However, the most massive event, GW190521, and the second most massive event, GW191109, show intriguing non-zero results for gravitational-wave birefringence. We find that the probability of association between GW190521 and the possible electromagnetic (EM) counterpart reported by Zwicky Transient Facility (ZTF) is increased when assuming birefringence. Excluding GW190521 and GW191109, the parity-violating energy scale is constrained to $M_\mathrm{PV} > 0.05$ GeV at $90\%$ credible interval, which is an improvement over previous results from twelve events by a factor of five. We discuss the implications of our results on modified gravity and possible alternative explanations such as waveform systematics. More detections of massive binary black hole mergers from the upcoming LIGO/Virgo/KAGRA run will shed light on the true origin of the apparent birefringence.

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Cited by 5 Pith papers

Reviewed papers in the Pith corpus that reference this work. Sorted by Pith novelty score. Full citation record

  1. Gravitational Wave Birefringence in generalized Palatini Chern Simons

    gr-qc 2026-07 conditional novelty 6.0 of 10

    Palatini f(R)+Chern–Simons gravity predicts amplitude and velocity birefringence in GW propagation, with the effect controlled by f_R and, under de-Sitter approximations, growing polynomially with redshift.

  2. Parity-violating spatially covariant gravity at total derivative order $d=5$

    gr-qc 2026-07 conditional novelty 6.0 of 10

    At total derivative order five, parity-violating spatially covariant gravity has exactly 59 independent monomials, and their tensor-perturbation response is controlled by four coefficient combinations producing helici...

  3. Constraints on parity and Lorentz violations from gravitational waves: a comparison between single-parameter and multi-parameter analysis

    gr-qc 2025-07 conditional novelty 5.0 of 10

    Multi-parameter and single-parameter gravitational-wave analyses yield comparable parity and Lorentz violation constraints for three models, but degeneracies weaken the multi-parameter result when two parameters modif...

  4. Constraining Lorentz and parity violations in gravity with multiband gravitational wave observations

    gr-qc 2026-01 conditional novelty 4.0 of 10

    Future multiband GW networks could tighten Lorentz- and parity-violation energy-scale bounds by up to several orders of magnitude, with massive binaries best for low-frequency and loud binaries for high-frequency effects.

  5. Constraining parity and Lorentz violations in gravity with future ground- and space-based gravitational wave detectors

    gr-qc 2025-02 conditional novelty 4.0 of 10

    Future gravitational wave detectors could tighten constraints on parity- and Lorentz-violating energy scales by one to three orders of magnitude, with space-based detectors winning for certain frequency dependencies.

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