Massive to gauge field reduction and gravitational wave zone information

Abstract

I analyze the possible relevance of LIGO’s gravitational wave detection to the viability of massive gravity models. In GR, a wave zone, where the linearized approximation holds, is guaranteed to exist and the observed wave’s amplitude profile can be sufficiently related to the emitting strong field interior to verify that, in this case, it was due to an inspiraling black hole merger. After an excursion to massive spin 1’s massless limit, linear massive tensor theory is shown explicitly to propagate only (retarded) maximal, helicity 2, modes to O(m) as m→0; however, we don’t know if the full theory has a similar “wave zone” governed by the linear model. Even if it does, a much more serious obstacle for massive gravity is to construct a time-varying strong field event to compare with the strong field footprint of LIGO’s observed signals.