Gravitational Faraday rotation of gravitational waves by a Kerr black hole
Abstract
Gravitational Faraday Rotation (GFR) is a frame-dragging effect induced by rotating massive objects, which is one of the important, yet studied characteristics of lensed gravitational waves (GWs). In this work, we calculate the GFR angle of GWs in the weak deflection limit, assuming it is lensed by a Kerr black hole (BH). We find that the GFR effect changes the initial polarization state of the lensed GW. Compared with the Einstein deflection angle, the dominant term of the rotation angle is a second-order correction to the polarization angle, which depends on the light-of-sight component of BH angular momentum. Such a rotation is tiny and degenerates with the initial polarization angle. In some critical cases, the GFR angle is close to the detection capability of the third-generation GW detector network, although the degeneracy has to be broken.
Keywords
Cite
@article{arxiv.2204.10512,
title = {Gravitational Faraday rotation of gravitational waves by a Kerr black hole},
author = {Zhao Li and Jin Qiao and Wen Zhao and Xinzhong Er},
journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:2204.10512},
year = {2022}
}
Comments
13 pages, 1 figure, accepted by JCAP