A precise response function for the magnetic component of Gravitational Waves in Scalar-Tensor Gravity

TL;DR

This paper refines the response function for the magnetic component of gravitational waves in Scalar-Tensor Gravity, highlighting its significance at high frequencies and its potential to distinguish alternative theories from General Relativity.

Contribution

It provides a corrected, more precise response function for the magnetic component of GWs in Scalar-Tensor Gravity, emphasizing its importance in high-frequency detection and theory differentiation.

Findings

Corrected the magnetic response function in Scalar-Tensor Gravity.

Demonstrated the significance of magnetic components at high frequencies.

Showed the magnetic component's relevance in both GTR and alternative theories.

Abstract

The important issue of the magnetic component of gravitational waves (GWs) has been considered in various papers in the literature. From such analyses, it resulted that such a magnetic component becomes particularly important in the high frequency portion of the frequency range of ground based interferometers for GWs which arises from standard General Theory of Relativity (GTR). Recently, such a magnetic component has been extended to GWs arising from Scalar-Tensor Gravity (STG) too. After a review of some important issues on GWs in STG, in this paper we re-analyse the magnetic component in the framework of STG from a different point of view, by correcting an error in a previous paper and by releasing a more precise response function. In this way, we also show that if one neglects the magnetic contribution considering only the low-frequency approximation of the electric contribution, an important part of the signal could be, in principle, lost. The determination of a more precise response function for the magnetic contribution is important also in the framework of the possibility to distinguish other gravitational theories from GTR. At the end of the paper an expansion of the main results is also shown in order to recall the presence of the magnetic component in GRT too.