| The direct detection of gravitational waves from binary mergers has been hailed as the discovery of the century. In the light of recent evidence on the existence of gravitational waves, it is now possible to extract features about matter under extreme conditions and properties of different dynamical spacetimes. In LIGO, gravitational waves were detected using laser interferometry by measuring the spacetime distortion between the hanging and stationary mirrors when the gravitational waves passed by. A number of alternate ways of detecting gravitational waves through electromagnetic counterparts have been suggested. Here, we characterize the interaction between photons and gravitons, quantas of gravitational waves in low-energy theories of gravity, through an effective action of interacting photon degrees of freedom. This could open an alternate possibility to extract information from astrophysical objects indirectly. |
