Cosmological Interpretation for the Stochastic Signal in Pulsar Timing Arrays
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| Format: | Preprint |
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2023
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| _version_ | 1866909552560046080 |
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| author | Wu, Yu-Mei Chen, Zu-Cheng Huang, Qing-Guo |
| author_facet | Wu, Yu-Mei Chen, Zu-Cheng Huang, Qing-Guo |
| contents | The pulsar timing array (PTA) collaborations have recently reported compelling evidence for the presence of a stochastic signal consistent with a gravitational-wave background. In this letter, we combine the latest data sets from NANOGrav, PPTA and EPTA collaborations to explore the cosmological interpretations for the detected signal from first-order phase transitions, domain walls and cosmic strings, separately. We find that the first-order phase transitions and cosmic strings can give comparable interpretations compared to supermassive black hole binaries (SMBHBs) characterized by a power-law spectrum, but the domain wall model is strongly disfavored with the Bayes factor compared to the SMBHB model being 0.009. Furthermore, the constraints on the parameter spaces indicate that: 1) a strong phase transition at temperatures below the electroweak scale is favored and the bubble collisions make the dominant contribution to the energy density spectrum; 2) the cosmic string tension is $G μ\in [1.46, 15.3]\times 10^{-12}$ at $90\%$ confidence interval and a small reconnection probability $p<6.68\times 10^{-2}$ is preferred at $95\%$ confidence level, implying that the strings in (super)string theory are strongly favored over the classical field strings. |
| format | Preprint |
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arxiv_https___arxiv_org_abs_2307_03141 |
| institution | arXiv |
| publishDate | 2023 |
| record_format | arxiv |
| spellingShingle | Cosmological Interpretation for the Stochastic Signal in Pulsar Timing Arrays Wu, Yu-Mei Chen, Zu-Cheng Huang, Qing-Guo Cosmology and Nongalactic Astrophysics General Relativity and Quantum Cosmology High Energy Physics - Phenomenology The pulsar timing array (PTA) collaborations have recently reported compelling evidence for the presence of a stochastic signal consistent with a gravitational-wave background. In this letter, we combine the latest data sets from NANOGrav, PPTA and EPTA collaborations to explore the cosmological interpretations for the detected signal from first-order phase transitions, domain walls and cosmic strings, separately. We find that the first-order phase transitions and cosmic strings can give comparable interpretations compared to supermassive black hole binaries (SMBHBs) characterized by a power-law spectrum, but the domain wall model is strongly disfavored with the Bayes factor compared to the SMBHB model being 0.009. Furthermore, the constraints on the parameter spaces indicate that: 1) a strong phase transition at temperatures below the electroweak scale is favored and the bubble collisions make the dominant contribution to the energy density spectrum; 2) the cosmic string tension is $G μ\in [1.46, 15.3]\times 10^{-12}$ at $90\%$ confidence interval and a small reconnection probability $p<6.68\times 10^{-2}$ is preferred at $95\%$ confidence level, implying that the strings in (super)string theory are strongly favored over the classical field strings. |
| title | Cosmological Interpretation for the Stochastic Signal in Pulsar Timing Arrays |
| topic | Cosmology and Nongalactic Astrophysics General Relativity and Quantum Cosmology High Energy Physics - Phenomenology |
| url | https://arxiv.org/abs/2307.03141 |