Piercing the Vainshtein screen with anomalous gravitational wave speed: Constraints on modified gravity from binary pulsars

Abstract

By using observations of the Hulse-Taylor pulsar we constrain the gravitational wave (GW) speed to the level of $10^{-2}$. We apply this result to scalar-tensor theories that generalize Galileon 4 and 5 models, which display anomalous propagation speed and coupling to matter for GWs. We argue that this effect survives conventional screening due to the persistence of a scalar field gradient inside virialized overdensities, which effectively "pierces" the Vainshtein screening. In specific branches of solutions, our result allows to directly constrain the cosmological couplings in the effective field theory of dark energy formalism.

v3: typos corrected. Final version to appear on PRL