Probing Quadratic Gravity with Binary Inspirals

Abstract: In this paper, we study gravitational waves generated by binary systems within an extension of General Relativity which is described by the addition of quadratic in curvature tensor terms to the Einstein-Hilbert action. Treating quadratic gravity as an effective theory valid in the low energy/curvature regime, we argue that reliable calculations can be performed in the early inspiral phase, and furthermore, no flux of additional massive waves can be detected. We then compute the massive dipole (-1PN) leading corrections to the post-Newtonian (PN) expansion of the standard waveform. By confronting these theoretical calculations with available experimental data, we constrain both unknown parameters of quadratic gravity to be $0 \leq \gamma \, \lesssim 5.7\cdot 10^{76}$, and $-\frac{\gamma}{4} \leq \beta \, \lesssim - 4.2\cdot 10^{75}$.