Stochastic Gravitational Wave Backgrounds from Non-Tensorial Polarizations (Public)

Document #:

LIGO-T1700005-v1

Document type:

T - Technical notes

Abstract:

A stochastic gravitational wave background is expected to arise due to the overlap of many individually indistinguishable sources that are both astrophysical and cosmological in nature. General Relativity predicts two tensorial gravitational wave polarization modes, but general metric theories of gravity allow four additional scalar and vector modes. Detection of a stochastic background dominated by these non-tensorial polarizations would indicate that the theory of gravity should be extended beyond General Relativity. While the separation of the three types of polarizations is not possible given a two detector system like LIGO, we compute the signal to noise ratio assuming a stochastic background dominated by each mode.

Files in Document:

• Sylvia_Biscoveanu_FinalReport_T1700005.pdf (1.5 MB)

Other Files:

• Biscoveanu_Sylvia_Final_Presentation_T1700005.pdf (3.8 MB)

Topics:

• Stochastic

Authors:

• Sylvia Biscoveanu
• Thomas Callister

Keywords:

SURF16

Notes and Changes:

Public version of final report and presentation. For internal version (accessible only by LVC collaborators), see LIGO-T1600155.

Referenced by:

• LIGO-T1700002: Final reports from LIGO SURF program, Summer 2016