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Register a new userProbing a stationary non-Gaussian background of stochastic gravitational waves with pulsar timing arrays
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Gianmassimo Tasinato
Publication date
2019
fields
Physics
and research's language is
English
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We introduce the concept of stationary graviton non-Gaussianity (nG), an observable that can be probed in terms of 3-point correlation functions of a stochastic gravitational wave (GW) background. When evaluated in momentum space, stationary nG corresponds to folded bispectra of graviton nG. We determine 3-point overlap functions for testing stationary nG with pulsar timing array GW experiments, and we obtain the corresponding optimal signal-to-noise ratio. For the first time, we consider 3-point overlap functions including scalar graviton polarizations (which can be motivated in theories of modified gravity); moreover, we also calculate 3-point overlap functions for correlating pulsar timing array with ground based GW detectors. The value of the optimal signal-to-noise ratio depends on the number and position of monitored pulsars. We build geometrical quantities characterizing how such ratio depends on the pulsar system under consideration, and we evaluate these geometrical parameters using data from the IPTA collaboration. We quantitatively show how monitoring a large number of pulsars can increase the signal-to-noise ratio associated with measurements of stationary graviton nG.
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We study how to probe bispectra of stochastic gravitational waves with pulsar timing arrays. The bispectrum is a key to probe the origin of stochastic gravitational waves. In particular, the shape of the bispectrum carries valuable information of inflation models. We show that an appropriate filter function for three point correlations enables us to extract a specific configuration of momentum triangles in bispectra. We also calculate the overlap reduction functions and discuss strategy for detecting the bispectrum with multiple pulsars.
The detection of a stochastic background of low-frequency gravitational waves by pulsar-timing and astrometric surveys will enable tests of gravitational theories beyond general relativity. These theories generally permit gravitational waves with non-Einsteinian polarization modes, which may propagate slower than the speed of light. We use the total-angular-momentum wave formalism to derive the angular correlation patterns of observables relevant for pulsar timing arrays and astrometry that arise from a background of subluminal gravitational waves with scalar, vector, or tensor polarizations. We find that the pulsar timing observables for the scalar longitudinal mode, which diverge with source distance in the luminal limit, are finite in the subluminal case. Furthermore, we apply our results to $f(R)$ gravity, which contains a massive scalar degree of freedom in addition to the standard transverse-traceless modes. The scalar mode in this $f(R)$ theory is a linear combination of the scalar-longitudinal and scalar-transverse modes, exciting only the monopole and dipole for pulsar timing arrays and only the dipole for astrometric surveys.
Recent years have seen a burgeoning interest in using pulsar timing arrays (PTAs) as gravitational-wave (GW) detectors. To date, that interest has focused mainly on three particularly promising source types: supermassive--black-hole binaries, cosmic strings, and the stochastic background from early-Universe phase transitions. In this paper, by contrast, our aim is to investigate the PTA potential for discovering unanticipated sources. We derive significant constraints on the available discovery space based solely on energetic and statistical considerations: we show that a PTA detection of GWs at frequencies above ~3.e-5 Hz would either be an extraordinary coincidence or violate cherished beliefs; we show that for PTAs GW memory can be more detectable than direct GWs, and that, as we consider events at ever higher redshift, the memory effect increasingly dominates an events total signal-to-noise ratio. The paper includes also a simple analysis of the effects of pulsar red noise in PTA searches, and a demonstration that the effects of periodic GWs in the 10^-8 -- 10^-4.5 Hz band would not be degenerate with small errors in standard pulsar parameters (except in a few narrow bands).
We explore the potential of Pulsar Timing Arrays (PTAs) such as NANOGrav, EPTA, and PPTA to detect the Stochastic Gravitational Wave Background (SGWB) in theories of massive gravity. In General Relativity, the function describing the dependence of the correlation between the arrival times of signals from two pulsars on the angle between them is known as the Hellings-Downs curve. We compute the analogous overlap reduction function for massive gravity, including the additional polarization states and the correction due to the mass of the graviton, and compare the result with the Hellings-Downs curve. The primary result is a complete analytical form for the analog Hellings-Downs curve, providing a starting point for future numerical studies aimed at a detailed comparison between PTA data and the predictions of massive gravity. We study both the massless limit and the stationary limit as checks on our calculation, and discuss how our formalism also allows us to study the impact of massive spin-2 dark matter candidates on data from PTAs.
We discuss the theory of pulsar-timing and astrometry probes of a stochastic gravitational-wave background with a recently developed total-angular-momentum (TAM) formalism for cosmological perturbations. We review the formalism, emphasizing in particular the features relevant for this work and describe the observables we consider (i.e. the pulsar redshift and stellar angular displacement). Using the TAM approach, we calculate the angular power spectra for the observables and from them derive angular auto- and cross-correlation functions. We provide the full set of power spectra and correlation functions not only for the standard transverse-traceless propagating degrees of freedom in general relativity, but also for the four additional non-Einsteinian polarizations that may arise in alternative-gravity theories. We discuss how pulsar-timing and astrometry surveys can complement and serve as cross checks to one another and comment on the importance of testing the chirality of the gravitational-wave background as a tool to understand the nature of its sources. A simple rederivation of the power spectra from the plane-wave formalism is provided in an Appendix.
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