Constraints on Einstein-aether gravity from the precision timing of PSR J1738+0333
Abstract
We constrain Einstein-aether gravity -- a Lorentz-violating extension of General Relativity in which a dynamical, unit timelike vector field selects a preferred frame -- using updated high-precision pulsar timing observations of PSR J1738+0333 from EPTA second Data Release and the NANOGrav 9-year release, in combination with ToAs from Arecibo, Green Bank, Nancay, Parkes, and Westerbork. Our method accounts for both conservative and dissipative first post-Newtonian corrections arising from Lorentz violation; here we apply it to PSR J1738+0333 using the Bayesian timing pipeline Vela to process the full ToA dataset. We sample the joint posterior over binary component masses, post-Keplerian parameters and center-of-mass velocity components, and then apply a resampling scheme to propagate posteriors into robust constraints on the fundamental theory parameters, obtaining the most stringent strong-field bounds on the Einstein-aether coupling constants from a single binary pulsar system to date.
Keywords
Cite
@article{arxiv.2605.01436,
title = {Constraints on Einstein-aether gravity from the precision timing of PSR J1738+0333},
author = {Massimo Vaglio and Amodio Carleo and Abhimanyu Susobhanan and Enrico Barausse and Bilel Ben Salem and Alessandro Corongiu and Paulo C. C. Freire and Delphine Perrodin},
journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:2605.01436},
year = {2026}
}