Gravitational wave birefringence in spatially curved teleparallel cosmology

authored by: Manuel Hohmann, Christian Pfeifer
Abstract: We study tensor perturbations around the most general cosmologically symmetric backgrounds in a class of teleparallel gravity theories known as New General Relativity. These theories comprise a one-parameter class, which is fully consistent with observations at the post-Newtonian level, and which contains the teleparallel equivalent of General Relativity as a special case. We find that for a particular class of cosmological background geometries these theories exhibit gravitational wave birefringence and dispersion, i.e., the dispersion relation for gravitational waves depends on their polarization and wave number. The strength of this effect is directly related to the spatial curvature of the cosmological background and the parameter describing the deviation of the theory from General Relativity. We discuss the possibility of observing this effect in gravitational wave experiments.
External Organisation(s): University of Tartu
Center of Applied Space Technology and Microgravity (ZARM)
Type: Article
Journal: Physics Letters B
Volume: 834
ISSN: 0370-2693
Publication date: 10.11.2022
Publication status: Published
Peer reviewed: Yes
ASJC Scopus subject areas: Nuclear and High Energy Physics
Electronic version(s): https://doi.org/10.1016/j.physletb.2022.137437 (Access: Open)

BibTeX

@article{10bb6303ff3049cd8298bb971ad538de,
title = "Gravitational wave birefringence in spatially curved teleparallel cosmology",
abstract = "We study tensor perturbations around the most general cosmologically symmetric backgrounds in a class of teleparallel gravity theories known as New General Relativity. These theories comprise a one-parameter class, which is fully consistent with observations at the post-Newtonian level, and which contains the teleparallel equivalent of General Relativity as a special case. We find that for a particular class of cosmological background geometries these theories exhibit gravitational wave birefringence and dispersion, i.e., the dispersion relation for gravitational waves depends on their polarization and wave number. The strength of this effect is directly related to the spatial curvature of the cosmological background and the parameter describing the deviation of the theory from General Relativity. We discuss the possibility of observing this effect in gravitational wave experiments.",
keywords = "Gravitational waves, Teleparallel gravity, Tensor perturbations, Birefringence",
author = "Manuel Hohmann and Christian Pfeifer",
note = "Funding information: M.H. acknowledges support by the Estonian Ministry for Education and Science through the Personal Research Funding Grants PRG356 , as well as the European Regional Development Fund through the Center of Excellence TK133 “The Dark Side of the Universe”. C.P. was funded by the Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft (DFG, German Research Foundation) - Project Number 420243324 and acknowledges support from the DFG funded cluster of excellence Quantum Frontiers under Germany's Excellence Strategy - EXC-2123 QuantumFrontiers - 390837967 . M.H. and C.P. acknowledge networking support by the COST Action CA18108 .",
year = "2022",
month = nov,
day = "10",
doi = "10.1016/j.physletb.2022.137437",
language = "English",
volume = "834",
journal = "Physics Letters B",
issn = "0370-2693",
publisher = "Elsevier",
}