Probing string-inspired gravity with the inspiral-merger-ringdown consistency tests of gravitational waves

Abstract

The extreme-gravity collisions between black holes allow us to probe the underlying theory of gravity. We apply the theory-agnostic inspiral-merger-ringdown consistency test to an example theory beyond general relativity for the first time. Here we focus on the string-inspired Einstein-dilaton Gauss-Bonnet gravity and modify the inspiral, ringdown, and remnant black hole properties of the gravitational waveform. We found that future multiband observations allow us to constrain the theory stronger than current observations by an order of magnitude. The formalism developed here can easily be applied to other theories.

13 pages, 3 figures; updated to published version. Carson et al 2020 Class. Quantum Grav