We discuss the implications for gravitational wave detectors of a class of modified gravity theories which dispense with the need for dark matter. These models, which are known as dark matter emulators, have the property that weak gravitational waves couple to the metric that would follow from general relativity without dark matter whereas ordinary particles couple to a combination of the metric and other fields which reproduces the result of general relativity with dark matter. We show that there is an appreciable difference in the Shapiro delays of gravitational waves and photons or neutrinos from the same source, with the gravitational waves always arriving first. We compute the expected time lags for GRB 070201, for SN 1987a and for Sco-X1. We estimate the probable error by taking account of the uncertainty in position, and by using three different dark matter profiles.

• Received 4 May 2008

DOI:https://doi.org/10.1103/PhysRevD.77.124041