A Falsifiable Alternative to General Relativity

Abstract

Asymptotically Weyl-invariant gravity (AWIG) is further developed within the Palatini formalism as a power-counting renormalizable alternative to general relativity (GR). An expression for the dimensionless exponent n(R) is derived based on dynamical dimensional reduction. We show that this version of AWIG naturally resolves several theoretical issues normally associated with the Palatini formalism. A falsifiable prediction regarding the frequency of gravitational waves from binary black hole mergers is made. A preliminary analysis of gravitational wave GW150914 yields a maximum tension of 0.9σ with GR and marginally favours AWIG. A similar analysis of gravitational wave GW151226 yields a maximum tension of 2.7σ with GR and favours AWIG more significantly.

22 pages, 11 figures. Minor comments and corrections added. Conclusions remain unchanged. Conforms with the version published in Phys. Rev. D

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