f (R) gravity constraints from gravitational waves

: Vainio J, Vilja I

Publisher: SPRINGER/PLENUM PUBLISHERS

: NEW YORK,

: 2017

: General Relativity and Gravitation

: GENERAL RELATIVITY AND GRAVITATION

: GEN RELAT GRAVIT

: ARTN 99

: 49

: 8

: 10

: 0001-7701

: 1572-9532

DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s10714-017-2262-3

The recent LIGO observation sparked interest in the field of gravitational wave signals. Besides the gravitational wave observation the LIGO collaboration used the inspiraling black hole pair to constrain the graviton mass. Unlike general relativity, f (R) theories have a characteristic non-zero mass graviton. We apply this constraint on the graviton mass to viable f (R) models in order to find the effects on model parameters. We find it possible to constrain the parameter space with these gravity wave based observations. We consider the popular Hu-Sawicki model as a case study and find an appropriate parameter bracket. The result generalizes to other f (R) theories and can be used to constrain the parameter space.