Testing general relativity: Event Horizon Telescope versus LIGO/Virgo

Abstract

Recently the black hole nature of the compact object imaged by Event Horizon Telescope (EHT) was tested by putting bounds on a possible 1/r3 correction to the Newtonian potential. Here we perform a similar test, but using the gravitational wave (GW) signals from binary black hole inspirals. First we calculate how the phasing of a GW signal changes when introducing the same modification to the potential as with EHT. Next we select two gravitational wave detections from binary black holes, GW151226 and GW170608, whose long inspirals are particularly suited for the test at hand. Finally, we use publicly available LIGO-Virgo data to bound the dimensionless coefficient associated with the modification of the potential. The bounds we obtain this way are found to be similar to those of EHT.