Constraining modified theories of gravity through the detection of one extremely large mass-ratio inspiral
Phys. Rev. D 113, 104021 – Published 11 May, 2026
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1103/slrf-wl5c
Abstract
Extremely large mass-ratio inspirals (XMRIs), formed by brown dwarfs inspiraling into a massive black hole, emit gravitational waves (GWs) that fall within the detection band of future space-borne detectors such as LISA, TianQin, and Taiji. Their detection will measure the astrophysical properties of the massive black hole in the center of our Galaxy () with unprecedented accuracy and provide a unique probe of gravity in the strong field regime. Here, we estimate the benefit of using the GWs from XMRIs to constrain the Chern-Simons theory. Our results show that XMRI signals radiated from the late stages of the evolution are particularly sensitive to differences between Chern-Simons theory and general relativity. For low-eccentricity sources, XMRIs can put bounds on the Chern-Simons parameter at the level of to an accuracy of . For high-eccentricity sources, XMRIs can put bounds on the parameter at the level of to an accuracy of . Furthermore, using the time-frequency Markov Chain Monte Carlo method, we obtain the posterior distribution of XMRIs in the Chern-Simons theory. Our results show that almost all the parameters can be recovered within confidence interval. For most of the intrinsic parameters, the estimation accuracy reaches . For the brown dwarf mass, the estimation accuracy reaches , while for , the estimation accuracy reaches for high eccentricity sources and 1.27 for low eccentricity sources.