On gravitational waves in spacetimes with a nonvanishing cosmological constant

Joachim Näf, Philippe Jetzer, and Mauro Sereno
Phys. Rev. D 79, 024014 – Published 21 January 2009

Abstract

We study the effect of a cosmological constant Λ on the propagation and detection of gravitational waves. To this purpose we investigate the linearized Einstein’s equations with terms up to linear order in Λ in a de Sitter and an anti-de Sitter background spacetime. In this framework the cosmological term does not induce changes in the polarization states of the waves, whereas the amplitude gets modified with terms depending on Λ. Moreover, if a source emits a periodic waveform, its periodicity as measured by a distant observer gets modified. These effects are, however, extremely tiny and thus well below the detectability by some 20 orders of magnitude within present gravitational wave detectors such as LIGO or future planned ones such as LISA.

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  • Received 9 April 2008

DOI:https://doi.org/10.1103/PhysRevD.79.024014

©2009 American Physical Society

Authors & Affiliations

Joachim Näf*, Philippe Jetzer, and Mauro Sereno

  • Institut für Theoretische Physik, Universität Zürich, Winterthurerstrasse 190, CH-8057 Zürich, Switzerland

  • *naef@physik.uzh.ch

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Issue

Vol. 79, Iss. 2 — 15 January 2009

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