Short distance tests of general relativity from astronomy

Abstract

Recent detections of gravitational waves, together with the increasing precision of electromagnetic observations of neutron stars and black holes, have expanded the possibility of testing the theory of General Relativity. In this work, we parameterize extensions of General Relativity (GR), adding terms of high curvature, built from the fourth powers of the Riemann tensor, therefore, departing from GR in the ultraviolet (UV). The presence of these operators modifies the gravitational potential between compact objects, as well as their multipole moments. Through an Effective Field Theory approach, we calculate the corrections to the gravitational potential and radiative multipole, within the post-Newtonian approximation to GR and also obtain the equations of motion for the spin and these quantities are directly comparable with astronomical observations.