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Testing general relativity with gravitational waves: Improving and extending modified dispersion relation tests

Tomasz Baka1,2, Balázs Cirok3, K Haris4, Johannes Noller5,6, and N. V. Krishnendu7,8

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Phys. Rev. D 113, 064064 – Published 31 March, 2026

DOI: https://doi.org/10.1103/bgvh-c1wj

Abstract

Searching for a modified dispersion relation is one of the general relativity tests performed by the LIGO-Virgo-KAGRA Collaboration with each new cumulative Gravitational Wave Transient Catalog (GWTC). It considers classes of theories that modify the dispersion of gravitational waves by introducing a massive graviton or breaking Lorentz invariance. The symmetry breaking is parameterized phenomenologically by a momentum power law term pα added to the dispersion relation, with the test placing constraints on the amplitude Aα of the introduced deviation. In this work, we implement improvements to the test, chief among them group velocity parameterization, a better sampling procedure, and extension to negative exponents α of p. We then reanalyze the events from the third catalog, GWTC-3, with our improved method. Compared with GWTC-3 results, the individual event posteriors have significantly higher effective sample size and fewer multimodalities. The combined posteriors on the amplitude parameters Aα are, on average, 19% narrower. The 90% upper bound on the graviton mass changes from 2.42×10−11 to 2.21×10−11  peV. For the extension of our test to α∈{−1,−2,−3}, we find no evidence in favor of general relativity violation.

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Phys. Rev. D 113, 064064– Published 31 March, 2026
  • Received 20 November 2025
  • Accepted 30 January 2026
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Published by the American Physical Society under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International license. Further distribution of this work must maintain attribution to the author(s) and the published article’s title, journal citation, and DOI.

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