A longitudinal component in massive gravitational waves arising from a bimetric theory of gravity

After a brief review of the work of de Paula, Miranda and Marinho on massive gravitational waves arising from a bimetric theory of gravity, in this paper it is shown that the presence of the mass generates a longitudinal component in a particular polarization of the wave. The effect of this polarization on test masses is performed using the geodesic deviation. At the end of this paper the detectability of this particular polarization is also discussed, showing that its angular dependence could, in principle, discriminate such polarization with respect to the ones of general relativity, will present or future detectors achieve a high sensitivity. (C) 2007 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.