Parity Violation in Spin-Precessing Binaries: Gravitational Waves from the Inspiral of Black Holes in Dynamical Chern-Simons Gravity

TL;DR

This paper derives analytic gravitational waveforms for spin-precessing black hole binaries in dynamical Chern-Simons gravity, revealing modifications in phase and amplitude due to parity violation, and lays groundwork for future waveform modeling in modified gravity.

Contribution

It provides the first analytic expressions for gravitational waves from precessing black hole binaries in a parity-violating modified gravity theory using post-Newtonian approximation.

Findings

Corrections to nutation phase enter at 1PN order.

Precession angle and Thomas phase corrections enter at 0PN order.

Fourier phase modifications include effects from precession back-reaction and dipole radiation.

Abstract

Spin precession in compact binaries is intricately tuned to the multipole structure of the underlying bodies. For black holes, violations of the no-hair theorems induced by modifications to general relativity correct the precession dynamics, which in turn imprints onto the amplitude and phase modulations of the gravitational waves emitted by the binary. Recently, the spin precession equations were derived up to second order in spin for dynamical Chern-Simons gravity, a parity violating modified theory of gravity. We here solve these equations and construct, for the first time, analytic expressions for the time- and frequency-domain gravitational waves emitted in the quasi-circular inspiral of spin-precessing black hole binaries in a modified theory of gravity using the post-Newtonian approximation. Working within the small coupling approximation and using multiple scale analysis, we show that the corrections to the nutation phase enter at relative 1PN order, and the corrections to the precession angle and Thomas phase enter at relative 0PN order. Making use of the stationary phase approximation and shifted uniform asymptotics, we find that the Fourier phase of the waveform is characterized by three modifications, two due to the back-reaction of the precession dynamics onto the spin-orbit and spin-spin couplings that enter at 1.5PN and 2PN orders, and a 2PN modification due to the emission of dipole radiation. We also find that back-reaction of the precession dynamics forces the dCS corrections to the Fourier amplitude to enter at 0PN order, as opposed to 2PN order, as expected for spin-aligned binaries. Our work lays the first foundational stones to build an inspiral-merger-ringdown phenomenological model for spin-precessing binaries in a modified theory of gravity.