paper

Probing the non-linear structure of general relativity with black hole binaries

arXiv:gr-qc/0604067 · doi:10.1103/PhysRevD.74.024006

Abstract

Observations of the inspiral of massive binary black holes (BBH) in the Laser Interferometer Space Antenna (LISA) and stellar mass binary black holes in the European Gravitational-Wave Observatory (EGO) offer an unique opportunity to test the non-linear structure of general relativity. For a binary composed of two non-spinning black holes, the non-linear general relativistic effects depend only on the masses of the constituents. In a recent letter, we explored the possibility of a test to determine all the post-Newtonian coefficients in the gravitational wave-phasing. However, mutual covariances dilute the effectiveness of such a test. In this paper, we propose a more powerful test in which the various post-Newtonian coefficients in the gravitational wave phasing are systematically measured by treating three of them as independent parameters and demanding their mutual consistency. LISA (EGO) will observe BBH inspirals with a signal-to-noise ratio of more than 1000 (100) and thereby test the self-consistency of each of the nine post-Newtonian coefficients that have so-far been computed, by measuring the lower order coefficients to a relative accuracy of (respectively, ) and the higher order coefficients to a relative accuracy in the range -0.1 (respectively, -1).

5 pages, 4 figures. Revised version, accepted for publication in Phys. Rev D

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