Probing higher-spin particles with gravitational waves from compact binary inspirals

TL;DR

This paper introduces a theory-agnostic method within gravitational effective field theory to search for higher-spin particles using gravitational wave data from binary mergers, constraining their existence.

Contribution

It proposes a novel, model-independent approach to detect higher-spin particles via gravitational waves, applying it to real GW events and setting new constraints.

Findings

Higher-spin particles with masses between 10^{-12} and 10^{-11} eV are disfavored by GW data.

The method constrains higher-spin particles unless they form supersymmetric supermultiplets.

Framework extends to search for signals beyond General Relativity in future GW observations.

Abstract

Under the framework of gravitational effective field theory, we propose a theory agnostic strategy of searching for higher-spin particles with gravitational waves from compact binary inspirals. Using this strategy, we analyze gravitational wave signals from the binary black hole merger events GW151226 and GW170608, as well as the binary neutron star merger event GW170817. We find that the existence of higher-spin particles with mass ranged from $10^{-12} {\rm eV}$ to $10^{-11} {\rm eV}$ is strongly disfavored by these events unless the particles precisely combine within a supersymmetric supermultiplet. We argue that the gravitational effective field theory also provides a framework to search for signals beyond GR from other GW observations, such as extreme-mass-ratio-inspirals.