Published December 13, 2021 | Version Submitted
Discussion Paper Open

Tests of General Relativity with GWTC-3

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Abstract

The ever-increasing number of detections of gravitational waves (GWs) from compact binaries by the Advanced LIGO and Advanced Virgo detectors allows us to perform ever-more sensitive tests of general relativity (GR) in the dynamical and strong-field regime of gravity. We perform a suite of tests of GR using the compact binary signals observed during the second half of the third observing run of those detectors. We restrict our analysis to the 15 confident signals that have false alarm rates ≤10⁻³yr⁻¹. In addition to signals consistent with binary black hole (BH) mergers, the new events include GW200115_042309, a signal consistent with a neutron star--BH merger. We find the residual power, after subtracting the best fit waveform from the data for each event, to be consistent with the detector noise. Additionally, we find all the post-Newtonian deformation coefficients to be consistent with the predictions from GR, with an improvement by a factor of ~2 in the -1PN parameter. We also find that the spin-induced quadrupole moments of the binary BH constituents are consistent with those of Kerr BHs in GR. We find no evidence for dispersion of GWs, non-GR modes of polarization, or post-merger echoes in the events that were analyzed. We update the bound on the mass of the graviton, at 90% credibility, to m_g ≤ 1.27×10⁻²³eV/c². The final mass and final spin as inferred from the pre-merger and post-merger parts of the waveform are consistent with each other. The studies of the properties of the remnant BHs, including deviations of the quasi-normal mode frequencies and damping times, show consistency with the predictions of GR. In addition to considering signals individually, we also combine results from the catalog of GW signals to calculate more precise population constraints. We find no evidence in support of physics beyond GR.

Additional Information

Attribution 4.0 International (CC BY 4.0). Analyses in this paper made use of NumPy [270], SciPy [271], Astropy [272, 273], IPython [274], qnm [275], PES ummary [276], and GWpy [277]; plots were produced with Matplotlib [278], and Seaborn [279]. Posteriors were sampled with Stan [280], CPNest [144], PyMultinest [281, 282], Bilby [136, 137], and LALInference [138]. Power spectral densities are generated through the software BAYESWAVE [83, 145]. This material is based upon work supported by NSF's LIGO Laboratory which is a major facility fully funded by the National Science Foundation. The authors also gratefully acknowledge the support of the Science and Technology Facilities Council (STFC) of the United Kingdom, the Max-Planck-Society (MPS), and the State of Niedersachsen/Germany for support of the construction of Advanced LIGO and construction and operation of the GEO600 detector. Additional support for Advanced LIGO was provided by the Australian Research Council. The authors gratefully acknowledge the Italian Istituto Nazionale di Fisica Nucleare (INFN), the French Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique (CNRS) and the Netherlands Organization for Scientific Research (NWO), for the construction and operation of the Virgo detector and the creation and support of the EGO consortium. The authors also gratefully acknowledge research support from these agencies as well as by the Council of Scientific and Industrial Research of India, the Department of Science and Technology, India, the Science & Engineering Research Board (SERB), India, the Ministry of Human Resource Development, India, the Spanish Agencia Estatal de Investigacion (AEI), the Spanish Ministerio de Ciencia e Innovacion and Ministerio de Universidades, the Conselleria de Fons Europeus, Universitat i Cultura and the Direccio General de Polıtica Universitaria i Recerca del Govern de les Illes Balears, the Conselleria d'Innovacio, Universitats, Ciencia i Societat Digital de la Generalitat Valenciana and the CERCA Programme Generalitat de Catalunya, Spain, the National Science Centre of Poland and the European Union – European Regional Development Fund; Foundation for Polish Science (FNP), the Swiss National Science Foundation (SNSF), the Russian Foundation for Basic Research, the Russian Science Foundation, the European Commission, the European Social Funds (ESF), the European Regional Development Funds (ERDF), the Royal Society, the Scottish Funding Council, the Scottish Universities Physics Alliance, the Hungarian Scientific Research Fund (OTKA), the French Lyon Institute of Origins (LIO), the Belgian Fonds de la Recherche Scientifique (FRS-FNRS), Actions de Recherche Concertees (ARC) and Fonds Wetenschappelijk Onderzoek – Vlaanderen (FWO), Belgium, the Paris Ile-de-France Region, the National Research, Development and Innovation Office Hungary (NKFIH), the National Research Foundation of Korea, the Natural Science and Engineering Research Council Canada, Canadian Foundation for Innovation (CFI), the Brazilian Ministry of Science, Technology, and Innovations, the International Center for Theoretical Physics South American Institute for Fundamental Research (ICTP-SAIFR), the Research Grants Council of Hong Kong, the National Natural Science Foundation of China (NSFC), the Leverhulme Trust, the Research Corporation, the Ministry of Science and Technology (MOST), Taiwan, the United States Department of Energy, and the Kavli Foundation. The authors gratefully acknowledge the support of the NSF, STFC, INFN and CNRS for provision of computational resources. This work was supported by MEXT, JSPS Leading-edge Research Infrastructure Program, JSPS Grant-in-Aid for Specially Promoted Research 26000005, JSPS Grant-in-Aid for Scientific Research on Innovative Areas 2905: JP17H06358, JP17H06361 and JP17H06364, JSPS Core-to-Core Program A. Advanced Research Networks, JSPS Grant-in-Aid for Scientific Research (S) 17H06133 and 20H05639 , JSPS Grant-in-Aid for Transformative Research Areas (A) 20A203: JP20H05854, the joint research program of the Institute for Cosmic Ray Research, University of Tokyo, National Research Foundation (NRF) and Computing Infrastructure Project of KISTI-GSDC in Korea, Academia Sinica (AS), AS Grid Center (ASGC) and the Ministry of Science and Technology (MoST) in Taiwan under grants including AS-CDA-105-M06, Advanced Technology Center (ATC) of NAOJ, Mechanical Engineering Center of KEK. We would like to thank all of the essential workers who put their health at risk during the COVID-19 pandemic, without whom we would not have been able to complete this work.

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Identifiers

Eprint ID
114534
Resolver ID
CaltechAUTHORS:20220429-221717423

Related works

Funding

NSF
Science and Technology Facilities Council (STFC)
Max-Planck-Society
State of Niedersachsen/Germany
Australian Research Council
Istituto Nazionale di Fisica Nucleare (INFN)
Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique (CNRS)
Nederlandse Organisatie voor Wetenschappelijk Onderzoek (NWO)
Council of Scientific and Industrial Research (India)
Department of Science and Technology (India)
Science and Engineering Research Board (SERB)
Ministry of Human Resource Development (India)
Agencia Estatal de Investigacion
Ministerio de Ciencia e Innovación (MCINN)
Ministerio de Universidades
Conselleria de Fons Europeus, Universitat i Cultura
Universitaria i Recerca del Govern de les Illes Balears
Conselleria d'Innovacio, Universitats, Ciencia i Societat Digital de la Generalitat Valenciana
Generalitat de Catalunya
National Science Centre (Poland)
European Regional Development Fund
Foundation for Polish Science
Swiss National Science Foundation (SNSF)
Russian Foundation for Basic Research
Russian Science Foundation
European Commission
European Social Funds
European Regional Development Funds (ERDF)
Royal Society
Scottish Funding Council
Scottish Universities Physics Alliance
Hungarian Scientific Research Fund (OTKA)
Lyon Institute of Origins (LIO)
Fonds de la Recherche Scientifique (FNRS)
Actions de Recherche Concertées (ARC)
Fonds Wetenschappelijk Onderzoek (FWO)
Paris Île-de-France Region
National Research, Development and Innovation Office (Hungary)
National Research Foundation of Korea
Natural Sciences and Engineering Research Council of Canada (NSERC)
Canada Foundation for Innovation
Ministério da Ciência, Tecnologia, Inovações e Comunicações (MCTIC)
International Center for Theoretical Physics South American Institute for Fundamental Research (ICTP-SAIFR)
Research Grants Council of Hong Kong
National Natural Science Foundation of China
Leverhulme Trust
Research Corporation
Department of Energy (DOE)
Kavli Foundation
Ministry of Education, Culture, Sports, Science and Technology (MEXT)
Japan Society for the Promotion of Science (JSPS)
26000005
Japan Society for the Promotion of Science (JSPS)
JP17H06358
Japan Society for the Promotion of Science (JSPS)
JP17H06361
Japan Society for the Promotion of Science (JSPS)
JP17H06364
Japan Society for the Promotion of Science (JSPS)
17H06133
Japan Society for the Promotion of Science (JSPS)
20H05639
Japan Society for the Promotion of Science (JSPS)
20A203
Japan Society for the Promotion of Science (JSPS)
JP20H05854
Institute for Cosmic Ray Research
University of Tokyo
Korea Institute of Science and Technology Information (KISTI)
Academia Sinica
Ministry of Science and Technology (Taipei)
AS-CDA-105-M06
National Astronomical Observatory of Japan
High Energy Accelerator Research Organization (KEK)

Dates

Created
2022-05-03
Created from EPrint's datestamp field
Updated
2023-06-02
Created from EPrint's last_modified field

Caltech Custom Metadata

Caltech groups
LIGO
Other Numbering System Name
LIGO Document
Other Numbering System Identifier
P2100275