Musings on Lorentz Violation Given the Recent Gravitational-Wave Observations of Coalescing Binary Black Holes

TL;DR

This paper discusses how recent gravitational wave observations from binary black hole mergers can test modifications to General Relativity, especially Lorentz-violating theories, in regimes of extreme gravity and high velocities.

Contribution

It explores the implications of gravitational wave data for constraining Lorentz-violating theories of gravity in strong-field, high-velocity regimes.

Findings

Constraints on Lorentz violation from gravitational wave data

Implications for alternative gravity theories

Insights into strong-field gravity phenomena

Abstract

The recent observation of gravitational waves by the LIGO/Virgo collaboration provides a unique opportunity to probe the extreme gravity of coalescing binary black holes. In this regime, the gravitational interaction is not only strong, but the spacetime curvature is large, characteristic velocities are a non-negligible fraction of the speed of light, and the time scale on which the curvature and gravity change is small. This contribution discusses some consequences of these observations on modifications to General Relativity, with a special emphasis on Lorentz-violating theories.