Graviton mass bounds from an analysis of bright star trajectories at the Galactic Center

Abstract

Abstract. In February 2016 the LIGO & VIRGO collaboration reported the discovery of gravitational waves in merging black holes, therefore, the team confirmed GR predictions about an existence of black holes and gravitational waves in the strong gravitational field limit. Moreover, in their papers the joint LIGO & VIRGO team presented an upper limit on graviton mass such as m g < 1.2 × 10 −22 eV . So, the authors concluded that their observational data do not show any violation of classical general relativity. We show that an analysis of bright star trajectories could constrain graviton mass with a comparable accuracy with accuracies reached with gravitational wave interferometers and the estimate is consistent with the one obtained by the LIGO & VIRGO collaboration. This analysis gives an opportunity to treat observations of bright stars near the Galactic Center as a useful tool to obtain constraints on the fundamental gravity law such as modifications of the Newton gravity law in a weak field approximation. In that way, based on a potential reconstruction at the Galactic Center we obtain bounds on a graviton mass.

Constraining the range of Yukawa gravity interaction from S2 star orbits III: improvement expectations for graviton mass bounds

“…A precession of orbit in Yukawa potential is in the same direction as in GR, but dependences of precession angles on semi-major axis and eccentricity are different in these two models, therefore, after observations of bright star orbits for one or a few periods one could select the best fit from two considered cases. In paper [4] we presented an upper bound for graviton mass 2.9×10 −21 eV using previous observations of S2 star (see also [108][109][110][111][112] for a more detailed discussion) and now we also demonstrate our forecasts to reduce this upper limit. As it was noted earlier, our current estimates for graviton mass is slightly weaker than the LIGO ones, but it is independent and consistent with LIGO results and we expect that the graviton mass estimate will be significantly improved with new observations.…”

“…In paper [4] we presented an upper bound for graviton mass 2.9×10 −21 eV using previous observations of S2 star (see also [108][109][110][111][112] for a more detailed discussion) and now we also demonstrate our forecasts to reduce this upper limit. As it was noted earlier, our current estimates for graviton mass is slightly weaker than the LIGO ones, but it is independent and consistent with LIGO results and we expect that the graviton mass estimate will be significantly improved with new observations.…”

Different Ways to Estimate Graviton Mass

“…46 If we apply our consideration for gravity theories with massive graviton and we use observational data for S2 star we obtain that 2.9 × 10 −21 eV with 90% C.L. 47 (see also discussion [48][49][50] ). Our estimate for graviton mass is slightly weaker than the LIGO ones, but it is independent and consistent with LIGO results.…”

“…46 If we apply our consideration for gravity theories with massive graviton and we use observational data for S2 star we obtain that 2.9 × 10 −21 eV with 90% C.L. 47 (see also discussion [48][49][50] ).…”

The black hole at the Galactic Center: Observations and models

“…Second, as it was noted that if a graviton has a non-vanishing mass then there exists an additional time delay between electromagnetic and gravitational wave signals, so there is another opportunity to evaluate a graviton mass. Based on analysis of S2 orbit data obtained with VLT and Keck telescopes we found that at the 90% confidence level we have λ g > 2900 AU= 4.3 × 10 11 km or m g < 2.9 × 10 −21 eV [124,125,126,127]. In February 2016 the LIGO-Virgo collaboration published a couple of works where the authors reported the discovery of gravitational waves from mergers of…”