Measuring the speed of gravitational waves with the distorted pulsars

TL;DR

This paper proposes a novel, model-independent method to measure the speed of gravitational waves using distorted pulsars, which could distinguish between general relativity and massive gravity theories.

Contribution

A new strategy utilizing pulsar glitches and frequency relationships to accurately measure gravitational wave speed without relying on specific models.

Findings

Potential to test GW speed with pulsars in our galaxy and nearby galaxies.

Method can achieve high accuracy in future observations.

Motivates future instrument design for gravitational wave detection.

Abstract

The measurement of the speed of gravitational waves (GWs) is useful to distinguish general relativity from massive gravity. We propose a new model-independent strategy to measure the speed of GWs with the distorted pulsars. Theoretically, when the the GW frequencies from a distorted pulsar are twice the frequencies of EM pulses, they should be emitted at the same time. By measuring the arrival times of these two signals emitted at the same time, the speed of GWs can be calculated with the time difference. Specifically, when the glitches of pulsars are taken into consideration, some pulsars in our Galaxy and nearby galaxies are potential to test our new strategy at high accuracy in the foreseeable future. On the other hand, the new method is meaningful as a motivation for future design of instruments.