Bounding the graviton mass with binary pulsar observations

Abstract

By comparing the observed orbital decay of the binary pulsars PSRB1913+16 and PSRB1534+12 to that predicted by general relativity due to gravitational-wave emission, we are able to bound the mass of the graviton to be less than $7.6\times10^{-20} \text{eV}/c^2$ at 90% confidence. This is the first such bound to be derived from dynamic gravitational fields. It is approximately two orders of magnitude weaker than the static-field bound from solar system observations, and will improve with further observations.