English

Constraining Lorentz symmetry breaking in bumblebee gravity with extreme mass-ratio inspirals

General Relativity and Quantum Cosmology 2026-05-11 v2

Abstract

Extreme mass-ratio inspirals (EMRIs), with their long-lived and highly relativistic orbital evolution, can probe strong-field spacetime geometry and provide an important means to test general relativity. In this work, we investigate EMRI waveforms in a Schwarzschild-like black hole spacetime arising in bumblebee gravity, where Lorentz symmetry breaking (LSB) is characterized by a dimensionless parameter \ell. We construct EMRI waveforms within the Augmented Analytic Kludge (AAK) framework using the modified orbital frequencies and fluxes. We find that \ell significantly affects the orbital evolution and thereby modifies the waveform. These modifications grow with increasing \ell and are further enhanced for more eccentric orbits. Furthermore, using Bayesian analysis, we obtain the posterior distributions of EMRI with the parameter \ell included. Our results show that all injected source parameters are recovered within their 1σ1\,\sigma credible intervals. We find that the bumblebee parameter \ell can be constrained with an uncertainty of order O(104)\mathcal{O}(10^{-4}) by LISA.

Cite

@article{arxiv.2605.05362,
  title  = {Constraining Lorentz symmetry breaking in bumblebee gravity with extreme mass-ratio inspirals},
  author = {Sheng Long and Zhong-wu Xia and Huajie Gong and Zhoujian Cao and Qiyuan Pan and Jiliang Jing},
  journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:2605.05362},
  year   = {2026}
}