GW170814: Gravitational wave polarization analysis Robert C Hilborn American Association of Physics Teachers, One Physics Ellipse, College Park, MD 20740, United States of America Email:
[email protected] Received Accepted for publication Published Abstract To determine the polarization character of gravitational waves, we use strain data from the GW170814 binary black hole coalescence event detected by the three LIGO-Virgo observatories, extracting the gravitational wave strain signal amplitude ratios directly from those data. Employing a geometric approach that links those ratios to the gravitational wave polarization properties, we find that there is a range of source sky locations, partially overlapping the LIGI-Virgo 90% credible range of GW170814 source locations, for which vector polarization is consistent with the observed amplitude ratios. A Bayesian inference analysis indicates that the GW170814 data cannot rule out vector polarization for gravitational waves. Confirmation of a vector polarization component of gravitational waves would be a sign of post- general relativity physics. Keywords: gravitational wave polarization, tests of general relativity 1 1. Introduction The observation of the binary black hole gravitational wave (GW) event GW170814 by the three LIGO-Virgo observatories [1] allows for a test of the polarization modes of GWs, something not possible with the previous GW observations involving just the two LIGO observatories [2]. General relativity (GR) predicts that GWs will exhibit only tensor polarization modes [1,3-6], an aspect of GR that has not been directly tested before. Any detection of non-tensorial polarization (that is, vector or scalar polarization modes) will be a signal of post-GR physics [7,8].