Gravitational radiation from birefringent matter dynamics

TL;DR

This paper develops second-order gravitational dynamics for matter with vacuum birefringence, predicting both Einstein-like massless waves and novel massive gravitational waves, with implications for gravitational-wave detection.

Contribution

It introduces a covariant perturbative approach to modified gravity with birefringent matter, deriving new gravitational wave modes and analyzing their detectability.

Findings

Massless gravitational waves match Einstein gravity predictions.

Massive waves appear above a frequency threshold.

New detector behavior under birefringent gravitational radiation.

Abstract

We present the second-order gravitational dynamics for a spacetime inhabited by matter fields which feature vacuum birefringence. The derivation follows a perturbative variant of the covariant constructive gravity program, ensuring diffeomorphism invariance of gravity and causal compatibility of matter theory and gravity. A subsequent spatio-temporal split of this theory reveals the presence of unphysical artifacts, which are cured by imposing constraints on the gravitational constants, reducing their number from ten to seven. Within this sector, we derive the gravitational radiation emitted by a binary system in circular motion. The system emits massless waves which correspond to the radiation predicted by Einstein gravity, but also massive waves, which are generated only above a certain angular frequency threshold and are unknown to Einstein gravity. A gravitational-wave detector modeled as sphere of freely falling test masses shows quantitatively and qualitatively new behavior under the influence of this radiation. The result is a prediction of gravitational self-coupling from first principles, demonstrating the predictive power of covariant constructive gravity for modified gravity research, especially in the era of gravitational-wave astronomy.