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  • Letter

Gravitational wave sources for pulsar timing arrays

Ligong Bian1,2,*, Shuailiang Ge2,3,†, Jing Shu3,2,4,‡, Bo Wang5,§, Xing-Yu Yang6,∥, and Junchao Zong7,8,¶

  • 1Department of Physics and Chongqing Key Laboratory for Strongly Coupled Physics, Chongqing University, Chongqing 401331, China
  • 2Center for High Energy Physics, Peking University, Beijing 100871, China
  • 3School of Physics and State Key Laboratory of Nuclear Physics and Technology, Peking University, Beijing 100871, China
  • 4Beijing Laser Acceleration Innovation Center, Huairou, Beijing 101400, China
  • 5International Centre for Theoretical Physics Asia-Pacific, University of Chinese Academy of Sciences, 100190 Beijing, China
  • 6Quantum Universe Center (QUC), Korea Institute for Advanced Study, Seoul 02455, Republic of Korea
  • 7Department of Physics, Nanjing University, Nanjing 210093, China
  • 8CAS Key Laboratory of Theoretical Physics, Institute of Theoretical Physics, Chinese Academy of Sciences, Beijing 100190, China

  • *lgbycl@cqu.edu.cn
  • †sge@pku.edu.cn
  • ‡jshu@pku.edu.cn
  • §wangbo21a@mails.ucas.ac.cn
  • ∥xingyuyang@kias.re.kr
  • jczong@smail.nju.edu.cn
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Phys. Rev. D 109, L101301 – Published 10 May, 2024

DOI: https://doi.org/10.1103/PhysRevD.109.L101301

Abstract

Very recently, the major pulsar timing array collaborations, including CPTA, EPTA, InPTA, NANOGrav, and PPTA, reported their results from searches for an isotropic stochastic gravitational wave background (SGWB), collectively representing positive evidence for a SGWB. In this work, we assessed the credibility of interpreting the Hellings-Downs correlated free-spectrum process of EPTA, PPTA, and NANOGrav as either the result of supermassive black hole binary mergers or various stochastic SGWB sources that originated in the early Universe, including first-order phase transitions, cosmic strings, domain walls, and large-amplitude curvature perturbations. Our results show that the current new datasets do not distinctly favor one specific SGWB source over the others based on Bayesian analysis. We also place constraints on new physics for the SGWB sources.

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Phys. Rev. D 109, L101301– Published 10 May, 2024
  • Received 5 July 2023
  • Accepted 9 April 2024
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