Detection of gravitational waves from black holes: Is there a window for alternative theories?

Abstract

Recently LIGO and VIRGO collaborations reported about observation of gravitational-wave signal corresponding to the inspiral and merger of two black holes, resulting into formation of the final black hole. It was shown that the observations are consistent with the Einstein theory of gravity with high accuracy limited mainly by the statistical error. Angular momentum and mass of the final black hole were determined with rather large allowance of tens of percents. Here we shall show that this indeterminacy in the range of the black-hole parameters allows for some not negligible deformations of the Kerr spacetime leading to the same frequencies of black-hole ringing. This means that at the current precision of the experiment there remain some possibilities for alternative theories of gravity.Comment: 5 pages, 1 figur