Award Date
August 2024
Degree Type
Dissertation
Degree Name
Doctor of Philosophy (PhD)
Department
Physics and Astronomy
First Committee Member
Carl-Johan Olaf Haster
Second Committee Member
Ashkan Salamat
Third Committee Member
Zhaohuan Zhu
Fourth Committee Member
Monika Neda
Number of Pages
72
Abstract
Under the assumptions of General Relativity (GR), gravitational waves propagate at the speed of light and their mediation can be represented as a particle through a massless graviton. We investigate the impact and observability of the presence of a massive graviton, how such a modification to GR would also modify the observed gravitational waves from astrophysical sources, and how this effect can be used as an independent measurement of cosmmological parameters, including the Hubble parameter H0. We simulate the impact of a massive graviton on compact binary coalescence observation in a near-future LIGO-Virgo-KAGRA interferometer network through a modification to the gravitational wave phase in the post-Newtonian framework. Our analysis finds that if we assume the presence of a graviton with a Compton wavelength of λG ≈ 1015m, corresponding to a mass mG ≤ 10−18eV/c2, we can utilize a population of 50 binary black hole observations to constrain H0 to a similar precision as current gravitational wave constraints. More sensitive observatories will be necessary to probe lower values in the graviton mass range and fully exploit this method.
Keywords
black hole binary; general relativity; gravitational waves; Hubble constant; post-Newtonian expansion
Disciplines
Astrophysics and Astronomy | Physics
Degree Grantor
University of Nevada, Las Vegas
Language
English
Repository Citation
Johnston, Margaret, "An Analysis of The Propagation of Gravitational Radiation Under a Graviton of Nonzero Mass and its Implications for Cosmological Measurements" (2024). UNLV Theses, Dissertations, Professional Papers, and Capstones. 5126.
https://digitalscholarship.unlv.edu/thesesdissertations/5126
Rights
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