Testing black hole's charged property is a fascinating topic in modified gravity and black hole astrophysics. In the first Gravitational-Wave Transient Catalog (GWTC-1), ten binary black hole merger events have been formally reported, and these gravitational wave signals have significantly enhanced our understanding of the black hole. In this paper, we try to constrain the amount of electric charge with the parameterized post-Einsteinian framework by treating the electric charge as a small perturbation in a Bayesian way. We find that the current limits in our work are consistent with the result of Fisher information matrix method in previous works. We also develop a waveform model considering a leading order charge effect for binary black hole inspiral.
We present a flexible model to describe the effects of generic deviations of observed gravitational wave signals from modeled waveforms in the LIGO and Virgo gravitational wave detectors. With the detection of 11 gravitational wave events from the GWTC-1 catalog, we are able to constrain possible deviations from our modeled waveforms. In this paper we present our coherent spline model that describes the deviations, then choose to validate our model on an example phenomenological and astrophysically motivated departure in waveforms based on extreme spontaneous scalarization. We find that the mo…
In this paper, we revisit the problem of using gravitational wave data to test the Einstein-dilation-Gauss-Bonnet theory, by using nine selected gravitational wave events from GWTC-3. Compared with existing work, we are taking into account the higher harmonics more properly and we also study the contribution of the merger-ringdown data. Using the inspiral data alone, we find that the best result is from GW200115, giving $\sqrt{|α|} < 1.1$ km, which is about 17\% tighter than the previous best result. We also notice the possible existence of a simple unexpected relation among the constraints fr…
We perform a new test of general relativity (GR) with signals from GWTC-2, the LIGO and Virgo catalog of gravitational wave detections. We search for the presence of amplitude birefringence, in which left versus right circularly polarized modes of gravitational waves are exponentially enhanced and suppressed during propagation. Such an effect is present in various beyond-GR theories but is absent in GR. We constrain the amount of amplitude birefringence consistent with the data through an opacity parameter $κ$, which we bound to be $κ\lesssim 0.74 \textrm{ Gpc}^{-1}$. We then use these theory-…
Primordial black holes (PBHs) might be formed in the early Universe and could comprise at least a fraction of the dark matter. Using the recently released GWTC-2 dataset from the third observing run of the LIGO-Virgo Collaboration, we investigate whether current observations are compatible with the hypothesis that all black hole mergers detected so far are of primordial origin. We constrain PBH formation models within a hierarchical Bayesian inference framework based on deep learning techniques, finding best-fit values for distinctive features of these models, including the PBH initial mass fu…
The weak equivalence principle (WEP) is the cornerstone of gravitational theories. At the local scale, WEP has been tested to high accuracy by various experiments. On the intergalactic distance scale, WEP could be tested by comparing the arrival time of different messengers emitted from the same source. The gravitational time delay caused by massive galaxies is proportional to $γ+1$, where the parameter $γ$ is unity in general relativity. The values of $γ$ for different massless particles should be different if WEP is violated, i.e., $Δγ$ is used to indicate the deviation from WEP. So far, $|Δ…
The propagation of gravitational waves can reveal fundamental features of the structure of spacetime. For instance, differences in the propagation of gravitational-wave polarizations would be a smoking gun for parity violations in the gravitational sector, as expected from birefringent theories like Chern-Simons gravity. Here we look for evidence of amplitude birefringence in the third catalog of detections by the Laser Interferometer Gravitational Wave Observatory and Virgo through the use of birefringent templates inspired by dynamical Chern-Simons gravity. From $71$ binary-black-hole signal…
Searching for Extra Dimensions with Gravitational Waves: Dark-Siren Constraints from GWTC-4
International Center for Theoretical Physics Asia-Pacific, University of Chinese Academy of Sciences（国际理论物理中心亚太区，中国科学院大学）；Taiji Laboratory for Gravitational Wave Universe, University of Chinese Academy of Sciences（太极引力波宇宙实验室，中国科学院大学）
In modified gravity models that allow for additional non-compact spacetime dimensions, energy from gravitational waves can leak into these extra spacetime dimensions, leading to a reduction in the amplitude of the observed gravitational waves, and thus a source of potential systematics in the inferred luminosity distances to gravitational wave sources. Since binary black hole (BBH) mergers are standard sirens, we use the pair-instability supernova (PISNe) mass gap and its predicted features to determine a mass scale and thus be able to break the mass-redshift degeneracy. We simultaneously fit …
We summarize the four tests of general relativity carried out using the ten binary black hole signals detected by Advanced LIGO and Advanced Virgo and included in their first catalog, GWTC-1. These events provide unprecedented opportunities for testing the predictions of general relativity for the gravitational waveforms from these highly dynamical, strong-field events. The first two tests check the consistency of the residuals with noise and the consistency of the low- and high-frequency parts of the signal. The other two tests check that parameterized deviations in the waveform model---inclu…
Mind the peak: improving cosmological constraints from GWTC-4.0 spectral sirens using semiparametric mass models
Università di Bologna（博洛尼亚大学）；INAF - Osservatorio di Astrofisica e Scienza dello Spazio di Bologna（博洛尼亚天文物理与空间科学研究所）；INFN - Sezione di Bologna（博洛尼亚意大利国家核物理研究所）
The data analysis carried out by the LIGO-Virgo collaboration on gravitational-wave events utilizes nested sampling to compute Bayesian evidences and posterior distributions for inferring the source properties of compact binaries. With poor sampling from the constrained prior, nested sampling algorithms may misbehave and fail to sample the posterior distribution faithfully. Fowlie et al. (2020) outlines a method of validating the performance of nested sampling, or identifying pathologies such as plateaus in the parameter space, using likelihood insertion order statistics. Here, this method is …
Clouds of ultralight bosons - such as axions - can form around a rapidly spinning black hole, if the black hole radius is comparable to the bosons' wavelength. The cloud rapidly extracts angular momentum from the black hole, and reduces it to a characteristic value that depends on the boson's mass as well as on the black hole mass and spin. Therefore, a measurement of a black hole mass and spin can be used to reveal or exclude the existence of such bosons. Using the black holes released by LIGO and Virgo in their GWTC-2, we perform a simultaneous measurement of the black hole spin distribution…
A discovery of gravitational waves from binary black holes raises a possibility that measurements of them can provide strict tests of CPT invariance in gravitational waves. When CPT violation exists, if any, gravitational waves with different circular polarizations could gain a slight difference in propagating speeds. Hence, the birefringence of gravitational waves is induced and there should be a rotation of plus and cross modes. For CPT-violating dispersion relation ${ω^{2}=k^{2}}$ ${\pm 2ζk^{3}}$, where a sign ${\pm}$ denotes different circular polarizations, we find no substantial deviatio…
The discovery of gravitational waves (GWs) provides an unprecedented arena to test general relativity, including the gravitational Lorentz invariance violation (gLIV). In the propagation of GWs, a generic gLIV leads to anisotropy, dispersion, and birefringence. GW events constrain the anisotropic birefringence particularly well. Kostelecký and Mewes (2016) performed a preliminary analysis for GW150914. We improve their method and extend the analysis systematically to the whole GW transient catalog, GWTC-1. This is the first global analysis of the spacetime anisotropic Lorentzian structure with…
The study of current gravitational waves (GW) catalogues provide an interesting model independent way to understand further the nature of dark energy. In this work, we present an update of the constrains related to dynamical dark energy parametrisations using recent Gravitational-Wave Transient catalogues (GWTC-1 and GWTC-2) along with Type Ia supernova (SNeIa) and Cosmic Chronometers (CC) catalogues. According to our Bayesian results using the full SNeIa+CC+GW database, the $Λ$CDM model shows a strong preference against two dark energy parameterisation known as Barboza-Alcaniz (BA) and the Lo…
Successful detection of gravitational waves has presented a new avenue to explore the nature of gravity. With the cumulative catalog of detected events, we can perform tests on General Relativity from various aspects with increasing precision. In this work, we focus on Lorentz symmetry during propagation of gravitational waves. Considering the dispersion relation in the gauge-invariant linearized gravity sector of the Standard-Model Extension, the anisotropy, birefringence, and dispersion effects will be induced during propagation of gravitational waves because of the Lorentz violating modific…
Gravitational-wave astronomy offers not only new vistas into the realm of astrophysics, but it also opens an avenue for probing, for the first time, general relativity in its strong-field, nonlinear, and dynamical regime, where the theory's predictions manifest themselves in their full glory. We present a study of whether the gravitational wave events detected so far by the LIGO-Virgo scientific collaborations can be used to probe higher-curvature corrections to general relativity. In particular, we focus on two examples: Einstein-dilaton-Gauss-Bonnet and dynamical Chern-Simons gravity. We fin…
Constraining the gravitational-wave breathing mode with LVK antenna patterns and GWTC data
National Astronomical Observatories, Chinese Academy of Sciences（中国科学院国家天文台）；The International Centre for Theoretical Physics Asia-Pacific, University of Chinese Academy of Sciences（亚洲太平洋理论物理中心，中国科学院大学）；Missouri University of Science and Technology（密苏里科技大学）
Parity-violating (PV) gravity has recently attracted interest in several aspects. One of them is the axion-graviton coupling to test the axion-dark matter model. Moreover, by extending Chern-Simons (CS) gravity to include derivatives of a scalar field up to the second order, a more general class of PV gravity theory, which we call the CNCL model, has been proposed~[M. Crisostomi {\it et al.}, Phys. Rev. D, {\bf 97}, 044034 (2018)]. The model can be further extended by including even higher derivatives of the scalar field and/or higher curvature terms. In this paper, we discuss the effect of pa…
Gravitational wave observations of compact binaries allow us to test general relativity (and modifications thereof) in the strong and highly-dynamical field regime of gravity. Here we confront two extensions to general relativity, dynamical Chern-Simons and Einstein-dilaton-Gauss-Bonnet theories, against the gravitational wave sources from the GWTC-1 and GWTC-2 catalogs by the LIGO-Virgo Collaboration. By stacking the posterior of individual events, we strengthen the constraint on the square root of the coupling parameter in Einstein-dilaton-Gauss-Bonnet gravity to $\sqrt{α_{\rm \tiny EdGB}} <…
Analysis of GWTC-3 with fully precessing numerical relativity surrogate models
University of Massachusetts, Dartmouth（达特茅斯马萨诸塞大学）；The University of Auckland（奥克兰大学）；OzGrav: The ARC Centre of Excellence for Gravitational Wave Discovery（引力波发现ARC卓越中心）；University of Nevada, Las Vegas（内华达大学拉斯维加斯分校）；Nevada Center for Astrophysics（内华达天体物理学中心）；LIGO Laboratory, Massachusetts Institute of Technology（麻省理工学院LIGO实验室）；Massachusetts Institute of Technology（麻省理工学院）；Max Planck Institute for Gravitational Physics (Albert Einstein Institute)（马克斯·普朗克引力物理学研究所（爱因斯坦研究所））
When binary black holes merge in dense star clusters, their remnants can pair up with other black holes in the cluster, forming heavier and heavier black holes in a process called hierarchical merger. The most important condition for hierarchical merger to occur is that remnants formed by mergers are retained by the host star cluster. Using the publicly available gravitational-wave event database, we infer the magnitudes of kick velocities imparted to the remnant black holes due to anisotropic emission of gravitational waves and use that to quantify the retention probability of each event as a…
Inspiral waveforms of charged compact binaries and observational constraints
University of Chinese Academy of Sciences（中国科学院大学）；Taiji Laboratory for GW Universe, University of Chinese Academy of Sciences（中国科学院大学太极引力波宇宙实验室）；Hunan Normal University（湖南师范大学）；Yangtze University（长江大学）
Testing General Relativity with GWTC-4.0 through mixture models
Max Planck Institute for Gravitational Physics (Albert Einstein Institute)（马克斯·普朗克引力物理研究所（爱因斯坦研究所））；Instituto Galego de Física de Altas Enerxías, Universidade de Santiago de Compostela（加利西亚高能物理研究所，圣地亚哥-德孔波斯特拉大学）；Department of Physics, The Chinese University of Hong Kong（香港中文大学物理系）
We show that the gravitational waves measurements have raised the opportunity to measure $H_0$ with dark sirens to within 2$σ$, the accuracy required to resolve the \hubble tension. There are two principal reasons for our results: (1) upgrades to GW LIGO-Virgo transient catalogues GWTC-1 and GWTC-2 enhance their sensitive with only 10\% of contamination fraction, and (2) new dark sirens should help to constrain our dynamical EoS. In conjunction, sensitivity upgrades and a new dark energy model will facilitate an accurate inference of the \hubble constant $H_0$ to better with an $\pm 0.077$ err…
Action-level characterization of gravitational-wave propagation in dynamical Barbero--Immirzi gravity
State Key Laboratory of Radio Astronomy and Technology, Xinjiang Astronomical Observatory, Chinese Academy of Sciences（中国科学院新疆天文台射电天文与技术重点实验室）；Shanxi Province Intelligent Optoelectronic Sensing Application Technology Innovation Center, Yuncheng University（运城学院山西省智能光电传感应用技术创新中心）；Departamento de Física Teórica, IF-UERJ（里约热内卢州立大学理论物理研究所）；College of Mechanical and Electrical Engineering, Tarim University（塔里机械与电气工程学院）；Institute for Frontiers in Astronomy and Astrophysics, Beijing Normal University（北京师范大学天文与前沿物理研究所）；School of Physics and Astronomy, Beijing Normal University（北京师范大学物理与天文学院）
Lorentz invariance plays a fundamental role in modern physics. However, tiny violations of the Lorentz invariance may arise in some candidate quantum gravity theories. Prominent signatures of the gravitational Lorentz invariance violation (gLIV) include anisotropy, dispersion, and birefringence in the dispersion relation of gravitational waves (GWs). Using a total of 50 GW events in the GW transient catalogs GWTC-1 and GWTC-2, we perform an analysis on the anisotropic birefringence phenomenon. The use of multiple events allows us to completely break the degeneracy among gLIV coefficients and g…
Testing general relativity with gravitational waves -- improving and extending Modified Dispersion Relation tests
Utrecht University（乌得勒支大学）；Nikhef（荷兰国家核与亚原子物理研究所）；University of Szeged（塞格德大学）；National Institute of Technology, Kozhikode（科泽科德国立技术学院）；University College London（伦敦大学学院）；University of Portsmouth（朴茨茅斯大学）；University of Birmingham（伯明翰大学）；International Centre for Theoretical Sciences (ICTS)（国际理论科学中心）
The LIGO Scientific Collaboration and Virgo Collaboration (LVC) have recently reported in GWTC-2.1 eight additional candidate events with a probability of astrophysical origin greater than 0.5 in the LVC deeper search on O3a running. In GWTC-2.1, the majority of the effective inspiral spins ($χ_{\rm eff}$) show magnitudes consistent with zero, while two (GW190403$_{-}$051519 and GW190805$_{-}$211137) of the eight new events have $χ_{\rm eff}$ $> 0$ (at 90% credibility). We note that GW190403$_{-}$051519 was reported with $χ_{\rm eff}$ = $0.70^{+0.15}_{-0.27}$ and mass ratio $q$ = $0.25^{+0.54}…
Gravitational waves would attain birefringence during their propagation from distant sources to the Earth, when the CPT symmetry is broken. If it was sizeable enough, such birefringence could be measured by the Advanced LIGO, Virgo and KAGRA detector network. In this work, we place constraints on the birefringence of gravitational waves with the third observing run of this network, i.e. two catalogues GWTC-2 and GWTC-3. For the dispersion relation $ω^{2}=k^{2}\pm2ζk^{3}$, our analysis shows the up-to-date strictest limit on the CPT-violating parameter, i.e. \textcolor{black}{{$ζ=4.07^{+5.91}_{…
Black hole binaries formed dynamically in globular clusters are believed to be one of the main sources of gravitational waves in the Universe. Here, we use our new population synthesis code, cBHBd, to determine the redshift evolution of the merger rate density and masses of black hole binaries formed in globular clusters. We simulate $\sim 2$ million models to explore the parameter space that is relevant to real clusters and over all mass scales. We show that when uncertainties on the initial cluster mass function and density are properly taken into account, they become the two dominant factor…
High-order spatial derivatives are of crucial importance for constructing the low energy effective action of a Lorentz or parity violating theory of quantum gravity. One example is the Hořava-Lifshitz gravity, in one has to consider at least the sixth-order spatial derivatives in the gravitational action, in order to make the theory power-counting renormalizable. In this paper, we consider the Lorentz and parity violating effects on the propagation of GWs due to the fifth and sixth-order spatial derivatives respectively. For this purpose we calculate the corresponding Lorentz and parity violat…
The discovery of gravitational waves (GWs) from the compact binary components by LIGO/Virgo Collaboration provides an unprecedented opportunity for testing gravity in the strong and highly dynamical field regime of gravity. Currently a lot of model-independent tests have been performed by LIGO/Virgo Collaboration and no any significant derivation from general relativity has been found. In this paper, we study the parity violating effects on the propagation of GWs in the Nieh-Yan modified teleparallel gravity, a theory which modifies general relativity by a parity violating Nieh-Yan term. We ca…
Non parametric constraints of gravitational-electromagnetic luminosity distance ratio
Instituto de Física, Universidad de Antioquia（安蒂奥基亚大学物理研究所）；Max-Planck-Institut für Gravitationsphysik, Albert-Einstein-Institut（马克斯·普朗克引力物理学研究所阿尔伯特·爱因斯坦研究所）
The origin, environment, and evolution of stellar-mass black hole binaries are still a mystery. One of the proposed binary formation mechanisms is manifest in dynamical interactions between multiple black holes. A resulting framework of these dynamical interactions is the so-called hierarchical triple merger scenario, which happens when three black holes become gravitationally bound, causing two successive black hole mergers to occur. In such successive mergers, the black holes involved are directly related to each other, and hence this channel can be directly tested from the properties of the…
Constraining Ultralight Scalars with Black Hole Binary Mergers in Galactic Nuclei
Racah Institute of Physics, Hebrew University of Jerusalem（雷卡物理研究所，耶路撒冷希伯来大学）；Department of Astronomy, University of Wisconsin, Madison（威斯康星大学麦迪逊分校天文学系）
