Solar system vs. gravitational-wave bounds on the graviton mass

Understand

TThe detection of gravitational waves from merging binary black holes has led to a bound on the mass of a hypothetical massive carrier of the gravitational interaction predicted by some modified gravity theories (a massive graviton, for short), corresponding to a bound on the Compton wavelength $\lambda_g > 1.6 \times 10^{13}$ km.

• This bound is six times more stringent than a 1988 bound inferred from solar-system dynamics.
• Using 30 years of improvements in solar system data, chiefly from missions involving orbiters and probes of planets from Mercury to Saturn, we revisit this bound.
• We show that data on the perihelion advance of Mars obtained from the Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter leads to a credible lower bound on $\lambda_g$ between $1.2$ and $2.2 \times 10^{14}$ km, surpassing the gravitational-wave bound by an order of magnitude.