Hidden-Sector Spectroscopy with Gravitational Waves from Binary Neutron Stars

TL;DR

Neutron star binaries can serve as natural laboratories to detect hidden sectors with long-range forces, with gravitational wave observations revealing effects of ultralight dark gauge bosons that modify waveforms beyond pure gravity predictions.

Contribution

This work demonstrates that gravitational wave detectors can identify signatures of ultralight dark gauge bosons through waveform corrections in neutron star mergers.

Findings

Gravitational wave signals are affected by hidden sector interactions.

LIGO and Virgo can potentially detect these effects.

Waveform modifications cannot be explained by gravity alone.

Abstract

We show that neutron star binaries can be ideal laboratories to probe hidden sectors with a long range force. In particular, it is possible for gravitational wave detectors such as LIGO and Virgo to resolve the correction of waveforms from ultralight dark gauge bosons coupled to neutron stars. We observe that the interaction of the hidden sector affects both the gravitational wave frequency and amplitude in a way that cannot be fitted by pure gravity.