The black hole merger event GW150914 within a modified theory of General Relativity

TL;DR

This paper explores how a modified theory of General Relativity, incorporating dark energy effects near massive objects, impacts the interpretation of the GW150914 black hole merger event, suggesting larger masses and distances.

Contribution

It introduces a modified gravity model that accounts for dark energy effects near massive objects, altering the inferred parameters of black hole mergers.

Findings

Deduced chirping mass is larger under the modified theory.

Luminosity distance estimates increase with the new model.

Black hole mergers may occur at higher redshifts than previously thought.

Abstract

In February 2016 the first observation of gravitational waves were reported. The source of this event, denoted as GW150914, was identified as the merger of two black holes with a about 30 solar masses each, at a distance of approximately 400Mpc. These data where deduced using the Theory of General Relativity. Since 2009 a modified theory was proposed which adds near massive objects phenomenologically the contribution of a dark energy, whose origin are vacuum uctuations. The dark energy accumulates toward smaller distances, reducing effec- tively the gravitational constant. In this contribution we show that as a consequence the deduces chirping mass and the luminosity distance are larger. This result suggests that the black hole merger corresponds to two massive black holes near the center of primordial galaxies at large luminosity distance, i.e. large redshifts.