Abstract
We review the tests of general relativity that will become possible with space-based gravitational- wave detectors operating in the ~ 10-5 - 1 Hz low-frequency band. The fundamental aspects of gravitation that can be tested include the presence of additional gravitational fields other than the metric; the number and tensorial nature of gravitational-wave polarization states; the velocity of propagation of gravitational waves; the binding energy and gravitationalwave radiation of binaries, and therefore the time evolution of binary inspirals; the strength and shape of the waves emitted from binary mergers and ringdowns; the true nature of astrophysical black holes; and much more. The strength of this science alone calls for the swift implementation of a space-based detector; the remarkable richness of astrophysics, astronomy, and cosmology in the low-frequency gravitational-wave band make the case even stronger.
| Original language | English (US) |
|---|---|
| Article number | 7 |
| Journal | Living Reviews in Relativity |
| Volume | 16 |
| DOIs | |
| State | Published - Sep 12 2013 |
Funding
We thank Masaki Ando, Stanislav Babak, Christopher Berry, Emanuele Berti, Vitor Cardoso, Naoki Seto, Kent Yagi, and the Living Reviews referees for useful comments on the manuscript; we thank Christopher Moore for providing the image in Figure . JG’s work is supported by the Royal Society. MV’s work was carried out at the Jet Propulsion Laboratory under contract with the National Aeronautics and Space Administration, with support from the LISA project and PCOS program. JB’s work was partly supported by NASA grant 11-ATP11-046.
Keywords
- Black holes
- Data analysis
- General relativity
- Gravitation
- Gravitational waves
- LISA
- eLISA
ASJC Scopus subject areas
- Physics and Astronomy (miscellaneous)