What do gravitational wave detectors say about polymer quantum effects?

TL;DR

This paper investigates how polymer quantum effects influence gravitational wave signals and assesses their detectability with observatories like LISA through analytical and numerical methods.

Contribution

It provides the first detailed analysis of detector responses to polymerized gravitational waves, including both perturbative and nonperturbative solutions.

Findings

Polymer effects modify the frequency and amplitude of gravitational wave signals.

Analytical and numerical solutions agree on the impact of polymer effects.

Detectability of polymer-induced signals is analyzed for LISA.

Abstract

We compute the expected response of detector arms of gravitational wave observatories to polymerized gravitational waves. The mathematical and theoretical features of these waves were discussed in our previous work. In the present manuscript, we find both perturbative analytical, and full nonperturbative numerical solutions to the equations of motion of the detector arms using the method of geodesic deviations. These results show the modifications to both frequency and amplitude of the signal measured by the detector. Furthermore, we study the detectability of these signals in LISA by analyzing the modes in the frequency space.