An Analysis of The Propagation of Gravitational Radiation Under a Graviton of Nonzero Mass and its Implications for Cosmological Measurements

Under the assumptions of General Relativity (GR), gravitational waves propagate at the speed of light and their mediation can be represented as a particle through a massless graviton. We investigate the impact and observability of the presence of a massive graviton, how such a modification to GR would also modify the observed gravitational waves from astrophysical sources, and how this effect can be used as an independent measurement of cosmmological parameters, including the Hubble parameter H0. We simulate the impact of a massive graviton on compact binary coalescence observation in a near-future LIGO-Virgo-KAGRA interferometer network through a modification to the gravitational wave phase in the post-Newtonian framework. Our analysis finds that if we assume the presence of a graviton with a Compton wavelength of λG ≈ 1015m, corresponding to a mass mG ≤ 10−18eV/c2, we can utilize a population of 50 binary black hole observations to constrain H0 to a similar precision as current gravitational wave constraints. More sensitive observatories will be necessary to probe lower values in the graviton mass range and fully exploit this method.