Hidden-Sector Modifications to Gravitational Waves From Binary Inspirals

TL;DR

This paper assesses how future gravitational wave observations can detect hidden sectors like dark matter or scalar-tensor gravity by analyzing waveform modifications, providing highly sensitive constraints on these new physics scenarios.

Contribution

It explicitly computes gravitational waveforms with Yukawa modifications and estimates detector sensitivities, advancing methods to probe hidden sectors through gravitational wave data.

Findings

Optimal sensitivity to Yukawa interaction strength of 10^{-5}

Best constraints from Einstein Telescope

Detects dark matter mass fractions less than 10^{-15}

Abstract

Gravitational wave astronomy has placed strong constraints on fundamental physics, and there is every expectation that future observations will continue to do so. In this work we quantify this expectation for future binary merger observations to constrain hidden sectors, such as scalar-tensor gravity or dark matter, which induce a Yukawa-type modification to the gravitational potential. We explicitly compute the gravitational waveform, and perform a Fisher information matrix analysis to estimate the sensitivity of next generation gravitational wave detectors to these modifications. We find an optimal sensitivity to the Yukawa interaction strength of $10^{-5}$ and to the associated dipole emission parameter of $10^{-7}$, with the best constraints arising from the Einstein Telescope. When applied to a minimal model of dark matter, this provides an exquisite probe of dark matter accumulation by neutron stars, and for sub-TeV dark matter gravitational waves are able to detect mass fractions $m_{DM}/m_{NS}$ less then 1 part in $10^{15}$.