Gravitational-wave versus binary-pulsar tests of strong-field gravity

Binary systems comprising at least one neutron star contain strong gravitational field regions and thereby provide a testing ground for strong-field gravity. Two types of data can be used to test the law of gravity in compact binaries: binary pulsar observations, or forthcoming gravitational-wave observations of inspiralling binaries. We compare the probing power of these two types of observations within a generic two-parameter family of tensorscalar gravitational theories. Our analysis generalizes previous work (by us) on binary-pulsar tests by using a sample of realistic equations of state for nuclear matter (instead of a polytrope), and goes beyond a previous study (by C.M. Will) of gravitational-wave tests by considering more general tensorscalar theories than the one-parameter Jordan-Fierz-Brans-Dicke one. Finitesize effects in tensor-scalar gravity are also discussed. PACS numbers: 04.80.Cc, 04.30.-w, 97.60.Gb Typeset using REVTEX