Eur. Phys. J. C (2018) 78: 474
https://doi.org/10.1140/epjc/s10052-018-5967-x

Regular Article - Theoretical Physics

Gravitational waves in modified teleparallel theories of gravity

¹ Department of Physics, University of Tehran, North Kargar Ave, Tehran, Iran
² Dipartimento di Fisica, Università di Napoli “Federico II”, Via Cinthia, 80126, Naples, Italy
³ Istituto Nazionale di Fisica Nucleare (INFN), Sez. di Napoli, Via Cinthia, Naples, Italy
⁴ Gran Sasso Science Institute, Via F. Crispi 7, 67100, L’Aquila, Italy
⁵ Tomsk State Pedagogical University, Ul. Kievskaya, 60, Tomsk, 634061, Russia

^* e-mail: capozziello@na.infn.it

Received: 19 December 2017
Accepted: 1 June 2018
Published online: 9 June 2018

Abstract

Teleparallel theory of gravity and its modifications have been studied extensively in literature. However, gravitational waves has not been studied enough in the framework of teleparallelism. In the present study, we discuss gravitational waves in general theories of teleparallel gravity containing the torsion scalar T, the boundary term B and a scalar field . The goal is to classify possible new polarizations generalizing results presented in Bamba et al. (Phys Lett B 727:194–198, arXiv:1309.2698, 2013). We show that, if the boundary term is minimally coupled to the torsion scalar and the scalar field, gravitational waves have the same polarization modes of General Relativity.