Bounding the mass of graviton in a dynamic regime with binary pulsars

Abstract

In Einstein's general relativity, gravity is mediated by a massless spin-2 metric field, and its extension to include a mass for the graviton has profound implication for gravitation and cosmology. In 2002, Finn and Sutton used the gravitational-wave (GW) back-reaction in binary pulsars, and provided the first bound on the mass of graviton. Here we provide an improved analysis using 9 well-timed binary pulsars with a phenomenological treatment. First, individual mass bounds from each pulsar are obtained in the frequentist approach with the help of an ordering principle. The best upper limit on the graviton mass, $m_g<3.5\times 10^{-20}\mathrm{eV}/c^2$ (90% C.L.), comes from the Hulse-Taylor pulsar PSR B1913+16. Then, we combine individual pulsars using the Bayesian theorem, and get $m_g<5.2\times 10^{-21}\mathrm{eV}/c^2$ (90% C.L.) with a uniform prior for $\ln m_g$. This limit improves the Finn-Sutton limit by a factor of more than 10. Though it is not as tight as those from GWs and the Solar System, it provides an independent and complementary bound from a dynamic regime.

arXiv comment8 pages, 2 figures; accepted by PRD

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