Constraining Modified Theories of Gravity with Gravitational-Wave Stochastic Backgrounds.
The direct discovery of gravitational waves has finally opened a new observational window on our Universe, suggesting that the population of coalescing binary black holes is larger than previously expected. These sources produce an unresolved background of gravitational waves, potentially observable by ground-based interferometers. In this Letter we investigate how modified theories of gravity, modeled using the parametrized post-Einsteinian formalism, affect the expected signal, and analyze the detectability of the resulting stochastic background by current and future ground-based interferometers. We find the constraints that Advanced LIGO would be able to set on modified theories, showing that they may significantly improve the current bounds obtained from astrophysical observations of binary pulsars.
Theoretical Astrophysics, Eberhard Karls University of Tuebingen, Tuebingen 72076, Germany.
Andrea
A
Maselli
INAF-Osservatorio Astronomico di Roma, Via di Frascati 33, I-00040 Monteporzio, Italy.
Stefania
S
Marassi
Dipartimento di Fisica, Sapienza Universita di Roma & Sezione INFN Roma 1, P.A. Moro 5, 00185 Roma, Italy.
Valeria
V
Ferrari
Theoretical Astrophysics, Eberhard Karls University of Tuebingen, Tuebingen 72076, Germany.|Center for Relativistic Astrophysics and School of Physics, Georgia Institute of Technology, Atlanta, Georgia 30332, USA.
Kostas
K
Kokkotas
INAF-Osservatorio Astronomico di Roma, Via di Frascati 33, I-00040 Monteporzio, Italy.
Raffaella
R
Schneider