Bing Zhang (Physics & Astronomy) and Xuefeng Wu, former UNLV postdoctoral research associate now with Purple Mountain Observatory, China, and He Gao, a UNLV Ph.D. graduate now at Beijing Normal University, China, recently published a paper in Physical Review D to test Einstein’s weak equivalent principle using gravitational waves. The paper is led by Wu and Gao with Zhang being one of the eight coauthors. The authors suggested that by using gravitational waves recently detected by the Laser Interferometer Gravitational-Wave Observatory and possible electromagnetic counterparts they may be associated with, one can make an unprecedented stringent test on Einstein’s weak equivalence principle, which is the fundamental postulate of Einstein’s general theory of relativity.
