Combined search for anisotropic birefringence in the gravitational-wave transient catalog GWTC-1

Abstract

The discovery of gravitational waves (GWs) provides an unprecedented arena to test general relativity, including the gravitational Lorentz invariance violation (gLIV). In the propagation of GWs, a generic gLIV leads to anisotropy, dispersion, and birefringence. GW events constrain the anisotropic birefringence particularly well. Kostelecký and Mewes (2016) performed a preliminary analysis for GW150914. We improve their method and extend the analysis systematically to the whole GW transient catalog, GWTC-1. This is the first global analysis of the spacetime anisotropic Lorentzian structure with a catalog of GWs, where multiple events are crucial in breaking the degeneracy among gLIV parameters. With the absence of abnormal propagation, we obtain new limits on 34 coefficients for gLIV in the nonminimal gravity that surpass previous limits by ∼102-105.