Population-Level Detection of Variable Gravity in Strong Regime by Mass-Scale Phase Couplings in GWOSC Data

SUMMARY Gravitational-wave observations enable precision tests of general relativity (GR) in the dynamical strong-field regime. This repository accompanies the analysis presented in: Population-Level Detection of Variable Gravity in Strong Regime by Mass-Scale Phase Couplings in GWOSC Data. We present a multi-tiered population analysis of binary black hole mergers testing for a mass-dependent deviation in the effective gravitational coupling. The deviation is implemented both directly at the waveform level as a continuous parameter ΔG and as a phenomenological phase deformation, recovering GR identically in the ΔG → 0 limit. The analysis is motivated by a phenomenological prediction derived from the Irreducible Intent Model (IIM), but does not assume the correctness of that framework. ANALYSIS STRUCTURE Tier III — Structural Diagnostics Proxy-based structural diagnostics on catalog-level observables yielding strong information-theoretic preference for a mass-dependent phenomenological model relative to a GR-consistent fixed-coupling null. Tier II — Hierarchical Population Inference Hierarchical inference of strain-level hyperparameters (κ, α) governing the mass scaling of ΔGi. Tier I — Strain-Level Waveform Tests Direct ΔG comparisons between parameterized post-Einsteinian (ppE) waveforms and GR using LALSuite and Bilby. KEY RESULT Σ log(BF_marg) ≈ 22 INTERPRETATION Because this evidence arises from direct strain-level likelihood comparisons in which the deformation enters the waveform phase evolution, the result constitutes a population-level detection of a coherent phase deformation correlated with binary mass scale. Within the adopted mapping between the phase deformation and an effective gravitational coupling, this corresponds to strain-informed evidence for mass-dependent variation of the effective gravitational coupling in the strong-field regime. While this does not represent a single-event violation of General Relativity, it demonstrates that the current gravitational-wave catalog contains statistically significant population-level structure inconsistent with a strictly constant gravitational coupling.