Gravitational Wave Polarizations: A Test of General Relativity Using Binary Black Hole Mergers

Author: Mathur, Sudhi

Year: 2020

Degree: Senior thesis (Major)

Advisor: Weinstein, Alan Jay

Committee Members: Libbrecht, Kenneth George; Alicea, Jason F.; Kimble, H. Jeff; Roukes, Michael Lee; Politzer, Hugh David; Frautschi, Steven C.; Weinstein, Alan Jay

Option: Physics

DOI: 10.7907/q9qa-7770

Abstract

General Relativity predicts that gravitational radiation is purely tensor polarized and thus, gravitational waves are composed of linear combinations of two transverse polarization modes, referred to as plus (+) and cross (×) tensor modes. However, alternate gravitational theories predict the existence of up to four additional vector and scalar longitudinal GW polarization modes.

In this thesis, we develop a test of the gravitational wave (GW) polarization prediction of general relativity by searching for small admixtures of vector and/or scalar polarization components in transient GWs from binary black hole mergers. We use a network of five non-co-oriented GW detectors available in the near future, Bayesian inference parameter estimation, and nested sampling to quantify the detection sensitivity for such non-tensor GW polarization components.

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