Michele's wiki/blog

Authors: K.G. Arun, B.R. Iyer, M.S.S. Qusailah, B.S. Sathyaprakash

Date: Sun, 16 Apr 2006

Abstract: Observations of the inspiral of massive binary black holes (BBH) in the Laser Interferometer Space Antenna (LISA) and stellar mass binary black holes in the European Gravitational-Wave Observatory (EGO) offer an unique opportunity to test the non-linear structure of general relativity. For a binary composed of two non-spinning black holes, the non-linear general relativistic effects depend only on the masses of the constituents. In a recent letter, we explored the possibility of a test to determine all the post-Newtonian coefficients in the gravitational wave-phasing. However, mutual covariances dilute the effectiveness of such a test. In this communication, we propose a more powerful test in which the various post-Newtonian coefficients in the gravitational wave phasing are systematically measured by treating three of them as independent parameters and demanding their mutual consistency. LISA (EGO) will observe BBH inspirals with a signal-to-noise ratio of more than 1000 (100) and thereby test the self-consistency of each of the nine post-Newtonian coefficients that have so-far been computed, by measuring the lower order coefficients to a relative accuracy of $\sim 10ˆ{-5}$ (respectively, $\sim 10ˆ{-4}$) and the higher order coefficients to a relative accuracy in the range $10ˆ{-4}$-0.1 (respectively, $10ˆ{-3}$-1).

abs pdf