Search arXiv⌕ Search
Home/Archive/arXiv

arXiv · 2403.07682

Testing Gravity with Binary Black Hole Gravitational Waves

Marta Colleoni·N. V. Krishnendu·Pierre Mourier·Sayantani Bera·Xisco Jiménez-Forteza
View original source ↗Read source document ↗Export metadata ↓

Abstract

General Relativity (GR) remains the most accurate theory of gravity to date. It has passed many experimental tests in the Solar System as well as binary pulsar, cosmological and gravitational-wave (GW) observations. Some of these tests probe regimes where gravitational fields are weak, the spacetime curvature is small, and the characteristic velocities are not comparable to the speed of light. Observations of compact binary coalescences enable us to test GR in extreme environments of strong and dynamical gravitational fields, large spacetime curvature, and velocities comparable to the speed of light. Since the breakthrough observation of the first GW signal produced by the merger of two black holes, GW150914, in September 2015, the number of confirmed detections of binary mergers has rapidly increased to nearly 100. The analysis of these events has already placed significant constraints on possible deviations from GR and on the nature of the coalescing compact objects. In this chapter, we discuss a selection of tests of GR applicable to observations of GWs from compact binaries. In particular, we will cover consistency tests, which check for consistency between the different phases of the binary's evolution, tests of GW generation, polarization and propagation, and tests of the remnant's nature. We conclude with a brief overview of the challenges and prospects for present and future observatories.

Explore related subjects

gr-qc

Keep this discovery

BibTeXRIS

Marta Colleoni, N. V. Krishnendu, Pierre Mourier, Sayantani Bera, Xisco Jiménez-Forteza. 2024-03-12. Testing Gravity with Binary Black Hole Gravitational Waves. https://arxiv.org/abs/2403.07682

Cite the original work for its findings. Save a collection to share your selection of sources.

KEEP EXPLORING

Related papers

arXiv2026

Electrovacuum Black Hole Uniqueness

We prove the black hole uniqueness conjecture in the axially symmetric, stationary, electrovacuum setting, subject to the refined asymptotic analysis of the associated singular harmonic maps, which includes an analyticity hypothesis at the axes. More precisely, it is shown that any asymptotically flat solution of the Einstein--Maxwell equations in this class, with more than one black hole horizon component is either: Majumdar--Papapetrou, up to a duality rotation, in which case all logarithmic angle defects vanish, or every finite axis rod logarithmic angle defect is strictly negative and hence every interaction force is strictly attractive. The proof extends the singular harmonic map method used for vacuum Kerr uniqueness in [18].

gr-qc↗
arXiv2026

Constraining Modified Mass-to-Horizon Cosmology Through Primordial Inflationary Observables

We investigate slow-roll inflation in a modified cosmological framework inspired by a generalized mass-to-horizon relation (MHR), $M=\gamma {c^2 L^n}/{G}$, where $n$ is a real parameter and $\gamma$ a dimensional constant. Using Padmanabhan's emergence paradigm, we derive the modified Friedmann equations for a flat FRW universe and analyze the dynamics of a canonical scalar field (inflaton) under the slow-roll approximation. We study the resulting inflationary phenomenology for power-law and Starobinsky potentials. For power-law potentials, the MHR modification fails to reconcile these models with current CMB constraints on $r$ and $n_s$. In contrast, Starobinsky inflation exhibits significant sensitivity to deviations from $n=1$. A perturbative analysis ($n=1+\Delta$) yields corrections to inflationary observables. We observe that the scalar power-spectrum normalization, under a fixed-Starobinsky prescription, imposes the stringent constraint $0.960 \lesssim n \lesssim 1.040$ for $N=60$ efolds. This is considerably tighter than spectral-index bounds. Our results establish inflation, particularly Starobinsky-like models, as a sensitive probe of generalized horizon thermodynamics and departures from standard MHR scaling.

gr-qc↗
arXiv2026

Improving the Sensitivity of Gravitational Wave Detection with Weighted Conformal Prediction

In the last decade, kilometre-scale interferometric gravitational-wave detectors have observed hundreds of compact binary mergers, the majority of which are binary black holes. However, the data are noise-dominated, and multiple independent search algorithms (pipelines) are used to enhance sensitivity and improve robustness. Rather than the standard approach of selecting the most significant pipeline output, we combine the outputs from all pipelines using a conformal prediction-based framework to provide statistically rigorous confidence estimates for candidate events. While combining pipelines improves sensitivity and ranking robustness, it requires a principled statistical framework that remains valid as data properties evolve across observing runs. A key challenge is distribution shifts between simulated datasets used for training and calibration and the real, unlabelled, observations used for testing, which can invalidate coverage guarantees and bias confidence estimates. In this work, we address this challenge by incorporating likelihood-ratio reweighting into our conformal prediction framework to account for covariate shift. Using mock datasets containing simulated signals, we demonstrate that weighted conformal prediction restores well-calibrated coverage under covariate shift and increases the confidence of events near the detection threshold, recovering true signals that would otherwise be missed.

gr-qc↗