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Numerical binary black hole mergers in dynamical Chern-Simons gravity: Scalar field

Okounkova, Maria and Stein, Leo C. and Scheel, Mark A. and Hemberger, Daniel A. (2017) Numerical binary black hole mergers in dynamical Chern-Simons gravity: Scalar field. Physical Review D, 96 (4). Art. No. 044020. ISSN 2470-0010. doi:10.1103/PhysRevD.96.044020. https://resolver.caltech.edu/CaltechAUTHORS:20170817-074242967

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Abstract

Testing general relativity in the nonlinear, dynamical, strong-field regime of gravity is one of the major goals of gravitational wave astrophysics. Performing precision tests of general relativity (GR) requires numerical inspiral, merger, and ringdown waveforms for binary black hole (BBH) systems in theories beyond GR. Currently, GR and scalar-tensor gravity are the only theories amenable to numerical simulations. In this article, we present a well-posed perturbation scheme for numerically integrating beyond-GR theories that have a continuous limit to GR. We demonstrate this scheme by simulating BBH mergers in dynamical Chern-Simons gravity (dCS), to linear order in the perturbation parameter. We present mode waveforms and energy fluxes of the dCS pseudoscalar field from our numerical simulations. We find good agreement with analytic predictions at early times, including the absence of pseudoscalar dipole radiation. We discover new phenomenology only accessible through numerics: a burst of dipole radiation during merger. We also quantify the self-consistency of the perturbation scheme. Finally, we estimate bounds that GR-consistent LIGO detections could place on the new dCS length scale, approximately ℓ ≲ O(10)km.


Item Type:Article
Related URLs:
URLURL TypeDescription
https://doi.org/10.1103/PhysRevD.96.044020DOIArticle
https://journals.aps.org/prd/abstract/10.1103/PhysRevD.96.044020PublisherArticle
https://arxiv.org/abs/1705.07924arXivDiscussion Paper
ORCID:
AuthorORCID
Stein, Leo C.0000-0001-7559-9597
Additional Information:© 2017 American Physical Society. Received 22 May 2017; published 16 August 2017. We would like to thank Yanbei Chen, Chad Galley, Luis Lehner, Robert McNees, Frans Pretorius, Thomas Sotiriou, Saul Teukolsky, Helvi Witek, Kent Yagi, and Nico Yunes for many valuable conversations. This work was supported in part by the Sherman Fairchild Foundation, the Brinson Foundation, and NSF Grants No. PHY-1404569 and No. AST-1333520 at Caltech. M. O. gratefully acknowledges the support of the Dominic Orr Graduate Fellowship at Caltech. Computations were performed on the Zwicky cluster at Caltech, which is supported by the Sherman Fairchild Foundation and by NSF award PHY-0960291. Some calculations used the computer algebra system mathematica, in combination with the xact/xtensor suite [29,30,63]. The figures in this paper were produced with matplotlib [64].
Group:Walter Burke Institute for Theoretical Physics
Funders:
Funding AgencyGrant Number
Sherman Fairchild FoundationUNSPECIFIED
Brinson FoundationUNSPECIFIED
NSFPHY-1404569
NSFAST-1333520
Caltech Dominic Orr Graduate FellowshipUNSPECIFIED
NSFPHY-0960291
Issue or Number:4
DOI:10.1103/PhysRevD.96.044020
Record Number:CaltechAUTHORS:20170817-074242967
Persistent URL:https://resolver.caltech.edu/CaltechAUTHORS:20170817-074242967
Usage Policy:No commercial reproduction, distribution, display or performance rights in this work are provided.
ID Code:80546
Collection:CaltechAUTHORS
Deposited By: Tony Diaz
Deposited On:17 Aug 2017 15:05
Last Modified:15 Nov 2021 19:36

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