Tests of General Relativity with the Binary Black Hole Signals from the LIGO-Virgo Catalog GWTC-1

The observations of binary black hole coalescences by Advanced LIGO and Advanced Virgo offer unprecedented opportunities for testing the predictions of general relativity for the gravitational waveforms from these highly dynamical, strong-field events. We apply four types of tests of general relativity to the ten highly significant binary black hole detections in the catalog GWTC-1. In one test, we subtract the best-fit waveform and check the consistency of the residuals with detector noise. In the second test, we check the consistency of the low- and high-frequency portions of the signals. The third test introduces phenomenological deviations in the waveform model (including in the post-Newtonian coefficients) and checks that they are consistent with zero. The fourth test constrains modifications to the propagation of gravitational waves due to a modified dispersion relation, including that from a massive graviton. We present results for individual events as well as combined results using the most significant events. Additionally, for strong events observed by all three detectors, we compare the evidence for purely tensor polarizations to that for purely non-tensor polarizations.