Among all cosmological quantum-gravity or quantum-gravity-inspired scenarios, only very few predict a blue-tilted primordial tensor spectrum. We explore five of them and check whether they can generate a stochastic gravitational-wave background detectable by present and future interferometers: non-local quantum gravity, string-gas cosmology, new ekpyrotic scenario, Brandenberger-Ho non-commutative inflation and multi-fractional spacetimes. We show that non-local quantum gravity is unobservable, while all the other models can reach the strain sensitivity of DECIGO but not that of LIGO-Virgo-KAGRA, LISA or Einstein Telescope. Other quantum-gravity models with red-tilted spectra (most loop quantum cosmologies) or with exceptionally tiny quantum corrections (Wheeler-DeWitt quantum cosmology) are found to be non-detectable.
We consider the gravitational radiation in conformal gravity theory. We perturb the metric from flat Mikowski space and obtain the wave equation after introducing the appropriate transformation for perturbation. We derive the effective energy-momentum tensor for the gravitational radiation, which can be used to determine the energy carried by gravitational waves.
In nonlocal general relativity, linearized gravitational waves are damped as they propagate from the source to the receiver in the Minkowski vacuum. Nonlocal gravity is a generalization of Einstein's theory of gravitation in which nonlocality is due to the gravitational memory of past events. That nonlocal gravity is dissipative is demonstrated in this paper within certain approximation schemes. The gravitational memory drag leads to the decay of the amplitude of gravitational waves given by the exponential damping factor exp (-t/τ), where $τ$ depends on the kernel of nonlocal gravity. The dam…
We demonstrate that Huygens' principle for gravitational waves fails in quadratic gravity models that exhibit conformal symmetry at high energies. This results in the blurring of gravitational wave signals over finite timescales related to the energy scale of new physics $M_{\star}$. Furthermore, on very small scales the gravitational wave Green's function reduces to that of the wave equation in two dimensions. In principle, $M_{\star}$ could be constrained directly from gravitational wave observations.
We consider the primordial gravity wave background produced by inflation. We compute the small anisotropy produced by the primordial scalar fluctuations.
We point out that there are only three polarizations for gravitational waves in $f(R)$ gravity, and the polarization due to the massive scalar mode is a mix of the pure longitudinal and transverse breathing polarization. The classification of the six polarizations by the Newman-Penrose quantities is based on weak, plane and null gravitational waves, so it is not applicable to the massive mode.
We explore the possibility of further gravitational wave modes in $F(T)$ gravity, where $T$ is the torsion scalar in teleparallelism. It is explicitly demonstrated that gravitational wave modes in $F(T)$ gravity are equivalent to those in General Relativity. This result is achieved by calculating the Minkowskian limit for a class of analytic function of $F(T)$. This consequence is also confirmed by the preservative analysis around the flat background in the weak field limit with the scalar-tensor representation of $F(T)$ gravity.
We derive the gravitational energy-momentum pseudo-tensor $τ^μ_{\phantomμν}$ in both Palatini and metric approaches to $f(R)$ gravity. We then obtain the related cosmological gravitational energy density. Considering a flat Friedmann-Lemaître-Robertson-Walker spacetime, the energy density complex of matter and gravitation vanishes in the metric approach, but results non-vanishing in the Palatini formalism. This feature could be relevant in order to physically discriminate between the two approaches.
The detection of gravitational waves by the Laser Interferometer Gravitational-Wave Observatory opens a new era to use gravitational waves to test alternative theories of gravity. We investigate the polarizations of gravitational waves in $f(R)$ gravity and Horndeski theory, both containing scalar modes. These theories predict that in addition to the familiar $+$ and $\times$ polarizations, there are transverse breathing and longitudinal polarizations excited by the massive scalar mode and the new polarization is a single mixed state. It would be very difficult to detect the longitudinal polar…
The goal of this short report is to summarise some key results based on our previous works on model independent tests of gravity at large scales in the Universe, their connection with the properties of gravitational waves, and the implications of the recent measurement of the speed of tensors for the phenomenology of general families of gravity models for dark energy.
We show that, based on important reasons, differently from the some recent claim in the literature, the YARK theory of gravity can reproduce neither the LIGO's "GW150914 signal" nor the other LIGO's detections of gravitational waves (GWs).
In this paper, we demonstrate that the Wald's entropy for any spherically symmetric blackhole within an infinite derivative theory of gravity is determined solely by the area law. Thus, the infrared behaviour of gravity is captured by the Einstein-Hilbert term, provided that the massless graviton remains the only propagating degree of freedom in the spacetime.
We calculate the spectrum of the relic gravitational wave due to the trans-Planckian effect in which the standard linear dispersion relations may be modified. Of the modified dispersion relations suggested in literatures which have investigated the trans-Planckian effect, we especially use the Corley-Jacobson dispersion relations. The Corley-Jacobson type modified dispersion relations can be obtained from Hořava-Lifshitz gravity which is non-relativistic and UV complete. Although it is not clear how the transitions from Hořava-Lifshitz gravity in the UV regime to Einstein gravity in the IR lim…
In this article we study a generalization of DGP scenarios, where the induced gravity is given by a $f(R)$ term. We obtain the effective gravitational equations and the effective FLRW cosmological equation on the brane of this model. We show that this generalization has also two regime, a 5D regime a low energies that has a self-accelerated branch of interest for cosmology and a 4D regime at high energies that it is described a modified gravitational theory.
We discuss the detectability of gravitational waves with a time dependent mass contribution, by means of the stochastic gravitational wave observations. Such a mass term typically arises in the cosmological solutions of massive gravity theories. We conduct the analysis based on a general quadratic action, and thus the results apply universally to any massive gravity theories in which modification of general relativity appears primarily in the tensor modes. The primary manifestation of the modification in the gravitational wave spectrum is a sharp peak. The position and height of the peak carry…
We study the gravitational field sourced by localized scalar fields (lumps) in higher-derivative theories of gravity. By working in a static and spherically symmetric configuration, we find the linearized spacetime metrics generated by scalar lumps for several Lagrangians: the vanishing potential, i.e. free massive scalar field, a polynomial potential, and the tachyon potential in open string field theory. We perform the analysis for different theories of gravity: Einstein's general relativity, four-derivative gravity, and ghost-free nonlocal gravity. We discuss the limit of validity of our an…
We discuss the scalar mode of gravitational waves emerging in the context of $F(R)$ gravity by taking into account the chameleon mechanism. Assuming a toy model with a specific matter distribution to reproduce the environment of detection experiment by a ground-based gravitational wave observatory, we find that chameleon mechanism remarkably suppresses the scalar wave in the atmosphere of Earth, compared with the tensor modes of the gravitational waves. We also discuss the possibility to detect and constrain scalar waves by the current gravitational observatories and advocate a necessity of th…
We consider the AQUAL theory - a theory of modified gravity capable of resolving the missing mass problem - and study its predictions for micro gravity tests at the gravitational saddle points of the Solar system. We report that the AQUAL model enhances the gravity at the sub-micrometer ranges around the gravitational saddle points in a way that so far has been unnoticed. This enhancement can be measured. We, therefore, call for moving toward implementing micrometer gravity tests within the Solar gravitational saddle points.
Teleparallel gravity offers a new avenue in which to construct gravitational models beyond general relativity. While teleparallel gravity can be framed in a way to be dynamically equivalent to general relativity, its modifications are mostly not equivalent to the traditional route to modified gravity. $f(T,B)$ gravity is one such gravitational theory where the second and fourth order contributions to the field equations are decoupled. In this work, we explore the all important cosmological perturbations of this new framework of gravity. We derive the gravitational propagation equation, its vec…
The source theory provides a straightforward way to obtain the Newton's potential upon establishing the vacuum-to-vacuum transition amplitude in quantized Einstein theory of gravity. Here, we use the same method to derive the gravitational potential of two static point masses in $f(R)=R+aR^2$ gravity.
In 1992, E.E.Podkletnov and R.Nieminen find that, under certain conditions, ceramic superconductor with composite structure has revealed weak shielding properties against gravitational force. In classical Newton's theory of gravity and even in Einstein's general theory of gravity, there are no grounds of gravitational shielding effects. But in quantum gauge theory of gravity, the gravitational shielding effects can be explained in a simple and natural way. In quantum gauge theory of gravity, gravitational gauge interactions of complex scalar field can be formulated based on gauge principle. Af…
The effective field theory of quantum gravity generically predicts non-locality to be present in the effective action, which results from the low-energy propagation of gravitons and massless matter. Working to second order in gravitational curvature, we reconsider the effects of quantum gravity on the gravitational radiation emitted from a binary system. In particular, we calculate for the first time the leading order quantum gravitational correction to the classical quadrupole radiation formula which appears at second order in Newton's constant.
General Relativity is a hugely successful description of gravitation. However, both theory and observations suggest that General Relativity might have significant classical and quantum corrections in the Strong Gravity regime. Testing the strong field limit of gravity is one of the main objectives of the future gravitational wave detectors. One way to detect strong gravity is through the polarization of gravitational waves. For quasi-normal modes of black-holes in General Relativity, the two polarisation states of gravitational waves have the same amplitude and frequency spectrum. Using the pr…
We study the ultralight axion dark matter with mass around $10^{-22}$ eV in $f(R)$ gravity which might resolve the dark energy problem. In particular, we focus on the fact that the pressure of the axion field oscillating in time produces oscillations of gravitational potentials. We show that the oscillation of the gravitational potential is sensitive to the model of gravity. Remarkably, we find that the detectability of the oscillation through the gravitational wave detectors can be significantly enhanced due to the nonlinear resonance between the ultralight axion and the scalaron.
We investigate the evolution of cosmological perturbations generated during de Sitter inflation in the conformal gravity. Primordial gravitational waves are composed of vector and tensor modes. We obtain the constant vector and tensor power spectra which seems to be correct because the conformal gravity is invariant under conformal transformation like the Maxwell kinetic term.
Collision of plane waves in dilaton gravity theories and low energy limit of string theory is considered. The formulation of the the problem and some exact solutions are presented.
We investigate the braneworld gravity starting from the non-conservative gravitational field equations in a five-dimensional bulk. The approach is based on the Gauss-Codazzi formalism along with the study of the braneworld consistency conditions. The effective gravitational equations on the brane are obtained and the constraint leading to a brane energy-momentum conservation is analyzed.
The gravitational dynamics of a collapsing matter configuration which is simultaneously radiating heat flux is studied in $f(R)$ gravity. Three particular functional forms in $f(R)$ gravity are considered to show that it is possible to envisage boundary conditions such that the end state of the collapse has a weak singularity and that the matter configuration radiates away all of its mass before collapsing to reach the central singularity.
We derive the exact gravitational wave solutions in a general class of quadratic Poincaré gauge gravity models. The Lagrangian includes all possible linear and quadratic invariants constructed from the torsion and the curvature, including the parity odd terms. The ansatz for the gravitational wave configuration and the properties of the wave solutions are patterned following the corresponding ansatz and the properties of the plane-fronted electromagnetic wave.
In this paper, we base on the formalism of Symbolic Gauge Theory in the case of General relativity; we calculate the Feynman diagrams for the interaction between harmonic gravitational connections in the topological field theory. These calculations provide insights to interactions between gravity and dark energy. They could, therefore, have important repercussions for current cosmological problems.
Teleparallel theory of gravity and its modifications have been studied extensively in literature. However, gravitational waves has not been studied enough in the framework of teleparallelism. In the present study, we discuss gravitational waves in general theories of teleparallel gravity containing the torsion scalar $T$, the boundary term $B$ and a scalar field $ϕ$. The goal is to classify possible new polarizations generalizing results presented in Ref.[15]. We show that, if the boundary term is minimally coupled to the torsion scalar and the scalar field, gravitational waves have the same p…
We study the effect of charge on gravitational collapse of inhomogeneous dust cloud in the Einstein, Gauss-Bonnet and Lovelock gravity. Dynamics of the collapsing shell is analyzed. The conditions for the occurrence of bounce during collapse are given. We also show that shell crossing occurs inevitably if the shell near the center is weakly charged.
The cross-correlation of gravitational wave strain with upcoming galaxy surveys probe theories of gravity in a new way. This method enables testing the theory of gravity by combining the effects from both gravitational lensing of gravitational waves and the propagation of gravitational waves in spacetime. We find that within 10 years, the combination of the Advanced-LIGO and VIRGO detector networks with planned galaxy surveys should detect weak gravitational lensing of gravitational waves in the low redshift Universe ($z<0.5$). With the next generation gravitational wave experiments such as Vo…
It is pointed out that the action recently proposed by Bañados et al. for gravitation in odd dimensions higher (and lower) than four, provides a natural quantization for the gravitational constant. These theories possess no dimensionful parameters and hence they may be power counting renormalizable.
We consider a modified gravity model with a massive graviton, but which nevertheless only propagates two gravitational degrees of freedom and which is free of ghosts. We show that non-singular bouncing cosmological background solutions can be generated. In addition, the mass term for the graviton prevents anisotropies from blowing up in the contracting phase and also suppresses the spectrum of gravitational waves compared to that of the scalar cosmological perturbations. This addresses two of the main problems of the matter bounce scenario.
The existence of spacetime singularities is one of the biggest problems of nowadays physics. According to Penrose, each physical singularity should be covered by a "cosmic censor" which prevents any external observer from perceiving their existence. However, classical models describing the gravitational collapse usually results in strong curvature singularities, which can also remain "naked" for a finite amount of advanced time. This proceedings studies the modifications induced by Asymptotically Safe Gravity on the gravitational collapse of generic Vaidya spacetimes. It will be shown that, fo…
We review how the large $c$ expansion of General Relativity leads to an effective theory in the form of Twistless Torsional Newton-Cartan gravity. We show how this is a strong field expansion around the static sector of General Relativity and illustrate this through two examples.
We show that the nonlinear massive gravity model of de Rham, Gabadadze, and Tolley admits exact plane gravitational wave solution whose waveform obeys the two-dimensional Helmholtz equation. The solution is valid for arbitrary values of the coefficients of the cubic and quartic terms. In the massless limit the solution reduces to the Aichelburg-Sexl metric in general relativity.
Recently, the author proposed an alternative vector theory of gravity. To the best of our knowledge, vector gravity also passes available tests of gravity, and, in addition, predicts the correct value of the cosmological constant without free parameters. It is important to find a new feasible test which can distinguish between vector gravity and general relativity and determine whether gravity has a vector or a tensor origin. Here we propose such an experiment based on measurement of propagation direction of gravitational waves relative to the perpendicular arms of a laser interferometer. We s…
We study the spherically symmetric gravitational collapse of massless scalar matter field in asymptotic flat spacetime in $f(R)$ gravity. In the Einstein frame of $f(R)$ gravity, an additional scalar field arises due to the conformal transformation. We find that besides the usual competition between gravitational energy and kinetic energy in the process of gravitational collapse, the new scalar field brought by the conformal transformation adds one more competing force in the dynamical system. The dynamical competition can be controlled by tuning the amplitudes of the initial perturbations of …
We derive the exact gravitational wave solutions in a general class of quadratic metric-affine gauge gravity models. The Lagrangian includes all possible linear and quadratic invariants constructed from the torsion, nonmetricity and the curvature. The ansatz for the gravitational wave configuration and the properties of the wave solutions are patterned following the corresponding ansatz and the properties of the plane-fronted electromagnetic wave.
In this work we use the theory of Teleparallelism Equivalent to General Relativity based in non-commutative space-time coordinates. In this context, we write the corrections of the Schwarzschild solution. As a important result, we find the corrections of the gravitational energy in the realm of teleparallel gravity due to the non-commutativity of space-time. Then we interpret such corrections as a manifestation of quantum theory in gravitational field.
The Brans-Dicke theory of gravity is one of the oldest ideas to extend general relativity by introducing a non-minimal coupling between the scalar field and gravity. The Solar System tests put tight constraints on the theory. In order to evade these constraints, various screening mechanisms have been proposed. These screening mechanisms allow the scalar field to couple to matter as strongly as gravity in low density environments while suppressing it in the Solar System. The Vainshtein mechanism, which is found in various modified gravity models such as massive gravity, braneworld models and sc…
We investigate the strong gravitational lensing for black hole with scalar charge in massive gravity. We find that the scalar charge and the type of the black hole significantly affect the radius of the photon sphere, deflection angle, angular image position, angular image separation, relative magnifications and time delay in strong gravitational lensing. Our results can be reduced to that of the Schwarzschild and Reissner-Nordstr$\ddot{o}$m black holes in some special cases.
The gravitational radiation power of a binary system in a noncommutative space is derived and it's rate of the period decrease is calculated to first order in noncommutativity parameter. By comparing the theoretical results with the observational data of the binary pulsar PSR 1913+16, we find a bound on the noncommutativity parameter.
Quasi-normal modes (QNMs) uniquely characterize the final black-hole. Till now, only the QNM frequency and damping time are used to test General relativity. In this work, we show explicitly that another property of the QNMs --- their polarization --- can be a reliable tool for probing gravity. We provide a consistent test for General relativity by considering Chern-Simons gravity. Distinguishing Chern-Simons gravity from General relativity using only template matching is highly challenging. Thus a parameter that can differentiate between Chern-Simons gravity and GR will be a suitable candidate…
The direct detection of gravitational waves (GW) from merging binary black holes and neutron stars mark the beginning of a new era in gravitational physics, and it brings forth new opportunities to test theories of gravity. To this end, it is crucial to search for anomalous deviations from general relativity in a model-independent way, irrespective of gravity theories, GW sources, and background spacetimes. In this paper, we propose a new universal framework for testing gravity with GW, based on the generalized propagation of a GW in an effective field theory that describes modification of gra…
It was recently observed in \cite{Park:2014tia} that the holographic nature of gravity may hold a key to quantization of gravity. The so-called "holographic quantization" has been carried out in \cite{Park:2014noa,Park:2015ota} for Einstein gravity in a flat background. Generalizing the procedure to a curved background is the main goal of the present work. In particular, we consider the Einstein action expanded around a Schwarzschild background
We consider the nondynamical Chern-Simons (nCS) modified gravity, which is regarded as a parity-odd theory of massive gravity in four dimensions. We first find polarization modes of gravitational waves for $θ=x/μ$ in nCS modified gravity by using the Newman-Penrose formalism where the null complex tetrad is necessary to specify gravitational waves. We show that in the Newman-Penrose formalism, the number of polarization modes is one in addition to an unspecified $Ψ_4$, implying three degrees of freedom for $θ=x/μ$. This compares with two for a canonical embedding of $θ=t/μ$. Also, if one intro…
The Einstein Telescope and other third generation interferometric detectors of gravitational waves are projected to be operational post $2030$. The cosmological signatures of gravitational waves would undoubtedly shed light on any departure from the current gravitational framework. We here confront a specific modified gravity model, the No Slip Gravity model, with forecast observations of gravitational waves. We compare the predicted constraints on the dark energy equation of state parameters $w_0^{}-w_a^{}$, between the modified gravity model and that of Einstein gravity. We show that the No …
We discuss dynamical aspects of gravitational plane waves in Einstein theory with massless scalar fields. The general analytic solution describes colliding gravitational waves with constant polarization, which interact with scalar waves and, for generic initial data, produce a spacetime singularity at the focusing hypersurface. There is, in addition, an infinite family of regular solutions and an intriguing static geometry supported by scalar fields. Upon dimensional reduction, the theory can be viewed as an exactly solvable two-dimensional gravity model. This provides a new viewpoint on the g…
We study the gravitational production of heavy X-particles of mass of the order of the inflaton mass, produced after the end of inflation. We find that, in the presence of a derivative coupling of the inflaton field or of the X-field to the Einstein tensor, the number of gravitationally produced particles is suppressed as the strength of the coupling is increased.
Results for the gravitational Wilson loop, in particular the area law for large loops in the strong coupling region, and the argument for an effective positive cosmological constant discussed in a previous paper, are extended to other proposed theories of discrete quantum gravity in the strong coupling limit. We argue that the area law is a generic feature of almost all non-perturbative lattice formulations, for sufficiently strong gravitational coupling. The effects on gravitational Wilson loops of the inclusion of various types of light matter coupled to lattice quantum gravity are discussed…
In this paper, we discuss the gravitational waves in the context of gauge theory gravity with a negative cosmological constant. The gauge theory gravity is a gravity theory under gauge formulation in the language of geometric algebra. In contrast to general relativity, the background spacetime in gauge theory gravity is flat, the gauge freedom comes from the fact that equations in terms of physical quantities should be kept in a covariant form under spacetime displacement and rotation. Similar to the electromagnetism, the gauge formulation enables us to interpret the gravitational force as a g…
We develop a formalism to calculate the response of a model gravitational wave detector to a quantized gravitational field. Coupling a detector to a quantum field induces stochastic fluctuations ("noise") in the length of the detector arm. The statistical properties of this noise depend on the choice of quantum state of the gravitational field. We characterize the noise for vacuum, coherent, thermal, and squeezed states. For coherent states, corresponding to classical gravitational configurations, we find that the effect of gravitational field quantization is small. However, the standard devia…
