Decoherence of Gravitational Wave Oscillations in Bigravity

TL;DR

This paper investigates how graviton mass and wave propagation distance cause decoherence in gravitational wave signals, leading to potential echo phenomena that can be used to constrain bigravity models.

Contribution

It analyzes the regime where decoherence affects gravitational wave signals, providing new limits on graviton mixing angles without relying on specific production mechanisms.

Findings

Decoherence can produce observable echo events in gravitational waves.

Experimental searches can probe a wide range of graviton masses.

New bounds on graviton mixing angles are established.

Abstract

Following up on our recent study, we consider the regime of graviton masses and gravitational wave propagation distances at which decoherence of the wave packets plays a major role for phenomenology. This regime is of particular interest, as it can lead to very striking phenomena of echo events in the gravitational waves coming from coalescence events. The power of the experimental search in this case lies in the fact that it becomes sensitive to a large range of graviton masses, while not relying on a specific production mechanism. We are thus able to place new relevant limits on the parameter space of the graviton mixing angle.