PRECISION TESTS OF THEORIES OF GRAVITY USING PULSARS

Abstract

In the quest of understanding gravity, binary pulsars provide indispensable laboratories for precision tests of gravity. Effects that can be studied in great detail include the emission of gravitational waves, Shapiro delay, orbital precession and more. But also fundamental differences between general relativity and alternative theories of gravity can be probed, such as possible violations of the strong equivalence principle, preferred frame effects or the existence of gravitational dipole radiation or scalar fields. Also the effects of spin precession in strongly self-gravitating bodies can be studied by observing effects of geodetic precession.