Gravitational Wave Implications for the Parity Symmetry of Gravity in the High Energy Region

Einstein's general relativity, as the most successful theory of gravity, is one of the cornerstones of modern physics. However, the experimental tests for gravity in the high energy region are limited. The emerging gravitational-wave astronomy has opened an avenue for probing the fundamental properties of gravity in a strong and dynamical field, and in particular, a high energy regime. In this work, we test the parity conservation of gravity with gravitational waves. If the parity symmetry is broken, the left- and right-handed modes of gravitational waves would follow different equations of motion, dubbed as birefringence. We perform full Bayesian inference by comparing the state-of-the-art waveform with parity violation with the compact binary coalescence data released by LIGO and Virgo collaboration. We do not find any violations of general relativity, thus constrain the lower bound of the parity-violating energy scale to be 0.09 GeV through the velocity birefringence of gravitational waves. This provides the most stringent experimental test of gravitational parity symmetry to date. We also find third generation gravitational-wave detectors can enhance this bound to O(10(2)) GeV if there is still no violation, comparable to the current energy scale in particle physics, which indicates gravitational-wave astronomy can usher in a new era of testing the ultraviolet behavior of gravity in the high energy region.

Automated summary

Researchers used gravitational waves to experimentally test the parity conservation of gravity and found no violations of general relativity, constraining the lower bound of the parity-violating energy scale to be 0.09 GeV. They also discovered that third generation gravitational-wave detectors could potentially enhance this bound to O(10(2)) GeV, indicating that gravitational-wave astronomy may usher in a new era of testing the ultraviolet behavior of gravity in the high energy region.