Constraints on Einstein-dilation-Gauss-Bonnet gravity from Black Hole-Neutron Star Gravitational Wave Events*

Recent gravitational wave observations allow us to probe gravity in the strong and dynamical field regime. In this talk, we focus on testing Einstein-dilation Gauss-Bonnet gravity motivated by string theory. In particular, we use two new neutron star black hole binaries (GW200105 and GW200115). We also consider GW190814 which is consistent with both a binary black hole and a neutron star black hole binary. Adopting the leading post-Newtonian correction and carrying out a Bayesian Markov-chain Monte Carlo simulations, we derive the 90% credible upper bound on the coupling constant of the theory as  √α_GB ≤ 1.33km, whose consistency is checked with an independent Fisher analysis. This bound is stronger than the bound obtained in previous literature by combining selected binary black hole events in GWTC-1 and GWTC-2 catalogs. We also derive a combined bound of √α_GB ≤ 1.18km, by stacking GW200105, GW200115, GW190814, and selected binary black hole events. In order to check the validity of the effect of higher post-Newtonian terms, we derive corrections to the waveform phase up to second post Newtonian order by mapping results in scalar-tensor theories to Einstein-dilation Gauss-Bonnet gravity. We find that such higher-order terms improve the bounds by14.5% for GW200105 and 6.9% for GW200115 respectively.