Testing strong-field gravity with tidal Love numbers

Abstract

The authors calculate the tidal Love numbers (TLN), which encode the effect of rapidly changing gravitational fields on deformable, self-gravitating objects, for various exotic compact objects. They have found a universal logarithmic dependence of the TLNs close to black holes and use this to propose future gravitational wave measurements of TLNs, which would provide a test for general relativity in the strong field regime.