Tests of Classical Gravity with Radio Pulsars
Abstract
Tests of gravity are important to the development of our understanding of gravitation and spacetime. Binary pulsars provide a superb playground for testing gravity theories. In this chapter we pedagogically review the basics behind pulsar observations and pulsar timing. We illustrate various recent strong-field tests of the general relativity (GR) from the Hulse-Taylor pulsar PSR B1913+16, the double pulsar PSR J07373039, and the triple pulsar PSR J0337+1715. We also overview the inner structure of neutron stars (NSs) that may influence some gravity tests, and have used the scalar-tensor gravity and massive gravity theories as examples to demonstrate the usefulness of pulsar timing in constraining specific modified gravity theories. Outlooks to new radio telescopes for pulsar timing and synergies with other strong-field gravity tests are also presented.
Keywords
Cite
@article{arxiv.2303.17185,
title = {Tests of Classical Gravity with Radio Pulsars},
author = {Zexin Hu and Xueli Miao and Lijing Shao},
journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:2303.17185},
year = {2024}
}
Comments
40 pages, 8 figures; Invited chapter to the forthcoming book "Recent Progress on Gravity Tests", Springer Singapore, (Eds) Cosimo Bambi and Alejandro Cardenas-Avendano