Constraint on the mass of graviton with gravitational waves

TL;DR

This paper investigates how a non-zero graviton mass affects gravitational wave signals and uses space-based detectors to set upper limits on the graviton mass, constraining it to be extremely small.

Contribution

It provides the first constraints on graviton mass using space-based gravitational wave observations of black hole binaries.

Findings

Wavelength of graviton constrained to >10^{17} meters

Graviton mass constrained to <10^{-60} kg

Negligible effect on detector response for small graviton mass

Abstract

We consider the effects of the mass of graviton on both the waveform of gravitational waves and the antenna response to gravitational waves. We find the effect on the response function is negligible for small mass. By using the Fisher matrix method, we make parameter estimations with space-based gravitational wave detectors for massive black hole binaries in massive gravity theory. The wavelength of massive graviton is constrained to be $\lambda_g\gtrsim 10^{17}$ m and the mass is constrained to be $m_g\lesssim 10^{-60}$ kg by one year's observation of massive black hole binaries with space-based gravitational wave detectors.