Over the past 90 years, the basic ingredients of general relativity have been tested in many different ways
and in many different settings. From the solar eclipse expedition of 1917 to the modern observations of
double neutron stars, general relativity has passed all tests with flying colors [181]. Yet, our inability to
devise a renormalizable quantum gravity theory, as well as the mathematical singularities found in many
solutions of Einstein’s equations, suggest that we should look harder for gravitational phenomena not
described by general relativity.
The search for such deviations has been very fruitful in the regime of very weak fields. Observations of
high-redshift supernovae [122, 136
] and of the cosmic microwave background with WMAP [156
]
have measured a non-zero cosmological constant (or a slowly rolling field that behaves as such
at late times). This discovery can be incorporated within the framework of general relativity,
if interpreted simply as a constant in the Einstein–Hilbert action. It nevertheless brought to
the surface a major problem in trying to connect gravity to basic ideas of quantum vacuum
fluctuations [179, 29].
In the strong-field regime, on the other hand, which is relevant for the evolution of the very early
universe and for determining the properties of black holes and neutron stars, little progress has been made
in testing the predictions of general relativity [157]. There are two reasons for this lag. First,
phenomena that occur in strong gravitational fields are complex and often explosive, making it
very difficult to find observable properties that depend cleanly on the gravitational field and
that allow for quantitative tests of gravity theories. Second, there exists no general theoretical
framework within which to quantify deviations from general relativistic predictions in the strong-field
regime.
During the current decade, technological advances and increased theoretical activity have led to
developments that promise to make strong-field gravity tests a routine in the near future. The first
generation of earth-based gravitational wave observatories (such as LIGO [88], GEO600 [62
],
TAMA300 [163
], and VIRGO [175
]) as well as the Beyond Einstein Missions (such as IXO, LISA, and the
Black Hole Imager [16]) will offer an unprecedented look into the near fields of black holes and neutron
stars. Moreover, recent ideas on quantum gravity [27
], brane-world gravity [90
], or other Lagrangian
extensions of general relativity [184
, 154
] will provide the means with which the experimental results will
be interpreted.
In this article, I review the theoretical and experimental prospects of testing strong-field general relativity with observations in the electromagnetic spectrum. In the first few sections, I discuss the motivation for performing such tests and then describe the astrophysical settings in which strong-field effects can be measured. In Section 5, I elaborate on the need for a theoretical framework within which strong-field gravity tests can be performed and in Section 6 I review the current quantitative tests of general relativity in the strong-field regime that use neutron stars. Finally, in Section 7, I discuss the prospect of probing and testing strong gravitational fields with upcoming experiments and observatories.
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