Pulsar Timing Noise from Brownian Motion of the Sun

Fuente: arXiv
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Main Author: Loeb, Abraham
Format: Preprint
Published: 2024
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author Loeb, Abraham
author_facet Loeb, Abraham
contents Recently, Pulsar Timing Arrays (PTAs) reported a signal at nanohertz frequencies consistent with a stochastic gravitational wave background. Here, I show that the Brownian motion of the Sun as a result of its random gravitational interactions with the cluster of thousands of unmodeled Main-belt asteroids of diameters <80km, combined with small inaccuracies in the estimated masses of larger asteroids, introduces timing noise for pulsars which is up to 20% of the reported signal at frequencies of ~1/(few-years). The asteroid contribution needs to be modeled better in order to obtain accurate inferences from the PTA signal.
format Preprint
id arxiv_https___arxiv_org_abs_2405_05410
institution arXiv
publishDate 2024
record_format arxiv
spellingShingle Pulsar Timing Noise from Brownian Motion of the Sun
Loeb, Abraham
General Relativity and Quantum Cosmology
Earth and Planetary Astrophysics
Solar and Stellar Astrophysics
Recently, Pulsar Timing Arrays (PTAs) reported a signal at nanohertz frequencies consistent with a stochastic gravitational wave background. Here, I show that the Brownian motion of the Sun as a result of its random gravitational interactions with the cluster of thousands of unmodeled Main-belt asteroids of diameters <80km, combined with small inaccuracies in the estimated masses of larger asteroids, introduces timing noise for pulsars which is up to 20% of the reported signal at frequencies of ~1/(few-years). The asteroid contribution needs to be modeled better in order to obtain accurate inferences from the PTA signal.
title Pulsar Timing Noise from Brownian Motion of the Sun
topic General Relativity and Quantum Cosmology
Earth and Planetary Astrophysics
Solar and Stellar Astrophysics
url https://arxiv.org/abs/2405.05410