Testing Einstein's weak equivalence principle with gravitational waves

Authors

X F. Wu, Nanjing UniversityFollow
H Gao, Beijing Normal UniversityFollow
J J. Wei, Purple Mountain Observatory, Chinese Academy of SciencesFollow
P Mészáros, Pennsylvania State UniversityFollow
Bing Zhang, University of Nevada, Las VegasFollow
Z G. Dai, Nanjing UniversityFollow
S N. Zhang, Purple Mountain Observatory, Chinese Academy of SciencesFollow
Z H. Zhu, Beijing Normal UniversityFollow

Document Type

Article

Publication Date

1-1-2016

Publication Title

Physical Review D

Volume

94

Issue

2

Abstract

A conservative constraint on Einstein's weak equivalence principle (WEP) can be obtained under the assumption that the observed time delay between correlated particles from astronomical sources is dominated by the gravitational fields through which they move. Current limits on the WEP are mainly based on the observed time delays of photons with different energies. It is highly desirable to develop more accurate tests that include the gravitational wave (GW) sector. The detection by the advanced LIGO/VIRGO systems of gravitational waves will provide attractive candidates for constraining the WEP, extending the tests to gravitational interactions with potentially higher accuracy. Considering the capabilities of the advanced LIGO/VIRGO network and the source direction uncertainty, we show that the joint detection of GWs and electromagnetic signals could probe the WEP to an accuracy down to 10-10, which is one order of magnitude tighter than previous limits, and 7 orders of magnitude tighter than the multimessenger (photons and neutrinos) results by supernova 1987A. © 2016 American Physical Society.

Language

English

Repository Citation

Wu, X. F., Gao, H., Wei, J. J., Mészáros, P., Zhang, B., Dai, Z. G., Zhang, S. N., Zhu, Z. H. (2016). Testing Einstein's weak equivalence principle with gravitational waves. Physical Review D, 94(2),
http://dx.doi.org/10.1103/PhysRevD.94.024061