Effects of Short-Distance Modifications to General Relativity in Spinning Binary Systems

Abstract

We investigate the possibility of testing short distance modifications to General Relativity via higher curvature terms in the fundamental gravity Lagrangian by analysing their impact on observations of spinning astronomical binary systems. By using effective field theory methods applied to the 2-body problem, generic lower bounds on the short-distance scale accompanying high curvature terms can be set. In particular we extend known results by deriving spin-dependent effects in binding energy, radiation emission process, and spin precession equations in binary systems, which are the fundamental ingredients to observe spin-dependent effects in gravitational wave detections from compact binary coalescences and spin precession in double binary pulsars.

39 pages, 15 figures. Various typos corrected in v2, version accepted for publication in PRD. Discussion added to spin-dependent emission terms of the parity breaking case in v3

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Cited by in corpus (3)

• The fifth-order post-Newtonian Hamiltonian dynamics of two-body systems from an effective field theory approach
• Generic EFT-motivated beyond General Relativity gravitational wave tests and their curvature dependence: from observation to interpretation
• Gravitational Wave Signals from Finite Size Effects in Spinning Binary Inspirals Including Parity Violating Constituents