Gravitational wave decay into dark energy

By P. Creminelli, Matthew Lewandowski, Giovanni Tambalo, F. Vernizzi. Journal of Cosmology and Astroparticle Physics, 2018

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We study the decay of gravitational waves into dark energy fluctuations π, through the processes γ → ππ and γ → γ π, made possible by the spontaneous breaking of Lorentz invariance. Within the EFT of Dark Energy (or Horndeski/beyond Horndeski theories) the first process is large for the operator ½ ̃ m42(t) δ g00 ( (3)R + δ Kμν δ Kμν −δ K2 ), so that the recent observations force ̃ m4 = 0 (or equivalently 0αH=). This constraint, together with the requirement that gravitational waves travel at the speed of light, rules out all quartic and quintic GLPV theories. Additionally, we study how the same couplings affect the propagation of gravitons at loop order. The operator proportional to ̃ m42 generates a calculable, non-Lorentz invariant higher-derivative correction to the graviton propagation. The modification of the dispersion relation provides a bound on ̃ m42 comparable to the one of the decay. Conversely, operators up to cubic Horndeski do not generate sizeable \hbox{higher-derivative corrections.}

Subfields: Astronomy and Astrophysics, Instrumentation

View Paper: https://www.semanticscholar.org/paper/3b79548c6f1fbde49f2d99863c2582a57a971bb2

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Citations in the corpus

Horndeski theory and beyond: a review (2019, background): “Note that in deriving the above result we have implicitly assumed that A3 6= 0, which means that we need to be more careful when considering DHOST theories devoid of the decay of gravitational waves into φ [205].”
Effective field theory of dark energy: A review (2019, background): “Additionally, in a recent work the decay of GWs into DE fluctuations in presence of Lorentz breaking was investigated [165].”
Dark energy and modified gravity in degenerate higher-order scalar–tensor (DHOST) theories: A review (2018, background): “8 It has been recently argued in [112] that more theories are in fact ruled out as dark energy candidates by the direct detection of gravitational waves, because they predict a rapid decay of gravitational waves into scalar field fluctuations.”