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Testing General Relativity with Gravitational Waves

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Handbook of Gravitational Wave Astronomy

Abstract

Gravitational-wave sources offer us unique testbeds for probing strong-field, dynamical, and nonlinear aspects of gravity. In this chapter, we give a brief overview of the current status and future prospects of testing general relativity with gravitational waves. In particular, we focus on three theory-agnostic tests (parameterized tests, inspiral-merger-ringdown consistency tests, and gravitational-wave propagation tests) and explain how one can apply such tests to example modified theories of gravity. We conclude by giving some open questions that need to be resolved to carry out more accurate tests of gravity with gravitational waves.

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Acknowledgements

Z.C. and K.Y. acknowledge support from the Owens Family Foundation. K.Y. also acknowledges support from NSF Award PHY-1806776, NASA Grant 80NSSC20K0523, and a Sloan Foundation Research Fellowship.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Physics, University of Virginia, Charlottesville, VA, USA

    Zack Carson & Kent Yagi

Authors
  1. Zack Carson
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  2. Kent Yagi
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Corresponding author

Correspondence to Kent Yagi .

Editor information

Editors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Physics, Fudan University, Shanghai, China

    Cosimo Bambi

  2. Université Paris Denis Diderot, Paris, France

    Stavros Katsanevas

  3. Institute for Astronomy and Astrophysics, Eberhard Karls University of Tübingen, Tübingen, Germany

    Konstantinos D. Kokkotas

Section Editor information

  1. Department of Physics, University of Texas at Austin, Austin, United States

    Pablo Laguna

  2. School of Physics, University of Texas at Austin, Austin, United States

    Deirdre Shoemaker

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Carson, Z., Yagi, K. (2021). Testing General Relativity with Gravitational Waves. In: Bambi, C., Katsanevas, S., Kokkotas, K.D. (eds) Handbook of Gravitational Wave Astronomy. Springer, Singapore. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-981-15-4702-7_41-1

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-981-15-4702-7_41-1

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  • Publisher Name: Springer, Singapore

  • Print ISBN: 978-981-15-4702-7

  • Online ISBN: 978-981-15-4702-7

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