Gravitational Waves from Quasi-Circular Black Hole Binaries in Dynamical Chern-Simons Gravity

TL;DR

This paper presents the first self-consistent calculation of gravitational waves from black hole binaries in dynamical Chern-Simons gravity, showing potential for significantly tighter constraints with future gravitational wave observations.

Contribution

It provides the first comprehensive computation of gravitational waves in dynamical Chern-Simons gravity, highlighting the possibility of greatly improved experimental constraints.

Findings

Advanced detectors could improve constraints by 6 orders of magnitude.

The theory's modifications are significant in the non-linear regime.

Current experiments cannot strongly constrain the theory.

Abstract

Dynamical Chern-Simons gravity cannot be strongly constrained with current experiments because it reduces to General Relativity in the weak-field limit. This theory, however, introduces modifications in the non-linear, dynamical regime, and thus, it could be greatly constrained with gravitational waves from the late inspiral of black hole binaries. We complete the first self-consistent calculation of such gravitational waves in this theory. For favorable spin-orientations, advanced ground-based detectors may improve existing solar-system constraints by 6 orders of magnitude.