Testing Gravity with Binary Pulsars in the SKA Era

arXiv:2607.02064 · astro-ph.HE, gr-qc · Submitted 2026-07-02 · Read on arXiv

V. Venkatraman Krishnan, L. Shao, V. Balakrishnan, A. Carleo, M. Colom i Bernadich, A. Corongiu, A. Deller, P. C. C. Freire, M. Geyer, E. Hackmann, H. Hu, Z. Hu, M. Kramer, J. Kunz, K. Liu, M. E. Lower, X. Miao, D. Perrodin, D. S. Pillay, A. Possenti, S. Ransom, I. Stairs, B. Stappers, The SKA Pulsar Science Working Group

astro-ph.HE, gr-qc

Submitted: 2026-07-02

Comments: Published in Advancing Astrophysics with the SKA II (AASKAII), 2026 (arXiv:2606.20366). Report-no:AASKAII/VenkatramanKrishnan01. Advancing Astrophysics with the SKAII(AASKAII) outlines the transformative scientific advances that will be enabled by the SKA telescopes. An earlier version of this chapter was published in the Open Journal of Astrophysics with Arxiv ID: arXiv:2512.16161

License: http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-sa/4.0/

The gist: Binary (and trinary) radio pulsars are natural laboratories in space for understanding gravity in the strong field regime, with many unique and precise tests carried out so far, including the most

Terminology

Calibration — 7× in this paper · explained in 7 episodes
Strong Equivalence Principle — 6× in this paper
Square Kilometre Array — 5× in this paper
Alignment — 3× in this paper · explained in 1 episode
Accuracy — 2× in this paper · explained in 1 episode
Australian Research Council — 2× in this paper
Gravitational Wave Emission — 2× in this paper · explained in 2 episodes
Italian Ministry of University and Research — 2× in this paper
Although General Relativity — 1× in this paper
Benchmark — 1× in this paper · explained in 2 episodes
Cooperation — 1× in this paper · explained in 2 episodes
Decoupling — 1× in this paper · explained in 2 episodes
Equation of State (EoS) — 1× in this paper · explained in 4 episodes
Fidelity — 1× in this paper · explained in 2 episodes
Laser Interferometer Gravitational Wave Observatory — 1× in this paper
Laser Interferometer Space Antenna — 1× in this paper
Trace — 1× in this paper · explained in 2 episodes
Very Long Baseline Interferometry — 1× in this paper

Abstract

Binary (and trinary) radio pulsars are natural laboratories in space for understanding gravity in the strong field regime, with many unique and precise tests carried out so far, including the most precise tests of the strong equivalence principle and of the radiative properties of gravity. The Square Kilometre Array (SKA) telescope, with its high sensitivity in the Southern Hemisphere, will vastly improve the timing precision of recycled pulsars, allowing for a deeper search of potential deviations from general relativity (GR) in currently known systems. A Galactic census of pulsars will, in addition, will yield the discovery of dozens of relativistic pulsar systems, including potentially pulsar -- black hole binaries, which can be used to test the cosmic censorship hypothesis and the ``no-hair'' theorem. Aspects of gravitation to be explored include tests of strong equivalence principles, gravitational dipole radiation, extra field components of gravitation, gravitomagnetism, and spacetime symmetries. In this chapter, we describe the kinds of gravity tests possible with binary pulsar and outline the features and abilities that SKA must possess to best contribute to this science.

Testing Gravity with Binary Pulsars in the SKA Era

Terminology

Abstract

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