paper

Graviton Mass from Close White Dwarf Binaries Detectable with LISA

arXiv:astro-ph/0311054 · doi:10.1103/PhysRevD.69.103502

Abstract

The arrival times of gravitational waves and optical light from orbiting binaries provide a mechanism to understand the propagation speed of gravity when compared to that of light or electromagnetic radiation. This is achieved with a measurement of any offset between optically derived orbital phase related to that derived from gravitational wave data, at a specified location of one binary component with respect to the other. Using a sample of close white dwarf binaries (CWDBs) detectable with the Laser Interferometer Space Antenna (LISA) and optical light curve data related to binary eclipses from meter-class telescopes for the same sample, we determine the accuracy to which orbital phase differences can be extracted. We consider an application of these measurements involving a variation to the speed of gravity, when compared to the speed of light, due to a massive graviton. For a subsample of 400 CWDBs with high signal-to-noise gravitational wave and optical data with magnitudes brighter than 25, the combined upper limit on the graviton mass is at the level of eV. This limit is two orders of magnitude better than the present limit derived by Yukawa-correction arguments related to the Newtonian potential and applied to the Solar-system.

revised version, 8 pages, 5 figures, to appear in PRD

References in corpus (6)

Cited by in corpus (17)