Polarization of gravitational waves in symmetric teleparallel theories of gravity and their modifications

Abstract: Symmetric teleparallel gravity (STG) offers an interesting avenue to formulate a theory of gravitation that relies neither on curvature nor torsion but only on non-metricity Q. Given the growing number of observations of gravitational waves (GWs) and their use to explore gravitational theories, in this work we investigate the GWs in various extensions of STG, focusing on their speed and polarization. For the simple STG, for theories that arise from the generalized irreducible decomposition of STG, and for f(Q) gravity, we obtain the same speed and polarizations with general relativity. For scalar - non-metricity theories, where a scalar field is nonminimally coupled to f(Q), we find that GWs propagate in general with a speed different than the one of light. Finally, for the case of f(Q,B) gravity we find that new polarizations do appear.