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Register a new userOn the gravitational wave sources from the NANOGrav 12.5-yr data
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The NANOGrav Collaboration recently reported a strong evidence for a stochastic common-spectrum process in the pulsar-timing data. We evaluate the evidence of interpreting this process as mergers of super massive black hole binaries and/or various stochastic gravitational wave background sources in the early Universe, including first-order phase transitions, cosmic strings, domain walls, and large amplitude curvature perturbations. We discuss the implications of the constraints on these possible sources. It is found that the cosmic string is the most favored source against other gravitational wave sources based on the Bayes factor analysis.
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We perform the first search for an isotropic non-tensorial gravitational-wave background (GWB) allowed in general metric theories of gravity in the North American Nanohertz Observatory for Gravitational Waves (NANOGrav) 12.5-year data set. By modeling the GWB as a power-law spectrum, we find strong Bayesian evidence for a spatially correlated process with scalar transverse (ST) correlations whose Bayes factor versus the spatially uncorrelated common-spectrum process is $99pm 7$, but no statistically significant evidence for the tensor transverse, vector longitudinal and scalar longitudinal polarization modes. The median and the $90%$ equal-tail amplitudes of ST mode are $mathcal{A}_{mathrm{ST}}= 1.06^{+0.35}_{-0.28} times 10^{-15}$, or equivalently the energy density parameter per logarithm frequency is $Omega_{mathrm{GW}}^{mathrm{ST}} = 1.54^{+1.20}_{-0.71} times 10^{-9}$, at frequency of 1/year.
The mergers of supermassive black hole binaries (SMBHBs) promise to be incredible sources of gravitational waves (GWs). While the oscillatory part of the merger gravitational waveform will be outside the frequency sensitivity range of pulsar timing arrays (PTAs), the non-oscillatory GW memory effect is detectable. Further, any burst of gravitational waves will produce GW memory, making memory a useful probe of unmodeled exotic sources and new physics. We searched the North American Nanohertz Observatory for Gravitational Waves (NANOGrav) 11-year data set for GW memory. This dataset is sensitive to very low frequency GWs of $sim3$ to $400$ nHz (periods of $sim11$ yr $-$ $1$ mon). Finding no evidence for GWs, we placed limits on the strain amplitude of GW memory events during the observation period. We then used the strain upper limits to place limits on the rate of GW memory causing events. At a strain of $2.5times10^{-14}$, corresponding to the median upper limit as a function of source sky position, we set a limit on the rate of GW memory events at $<0.4$ yr$^{-1}$. That strain corresponds to a SMBHB merger with reduced mass of $eta M sim 2times10^{10}M_odot$ and inclination of $iota=pi/3$ at a distance of 1 Gpc. As a test of our analysis, we analyzed the NANOGrav 9-year data set as well. This analysis found an anomolous signal, which does not appear in the 11-year data set. This signal is not a GW, and its origin remains unknown.
We compare the spectrum of the stochastic gravitational wave background produced in several models of cosmic strings with the common-spectrum process recently reported by NANOGrav. We discuss theoretical uncertainties in computing such a background, and show that despite such uncertainties, cosmic strings remain a good explanation for the potential signal, but the consequences for cosmic string parameters depend on the model. Superstrings could also explain the signal, but only in a restricted parameter space where their network behavior is effectively identical to that of ordinary cosmic strings.
We study a possibility of a strong first-order phase transition (FOPT) taking place below the electroweak scale in the context of $U(1)_D$ gauge extension of the standard model. As pointed out recently by the NANOGrav collaboration, gravitational waves from such a phase transition with appropriate strength and nucleation temperature can explain their 12.5 yr data. We first find the parameter space of this minimal model consistent with NANOGrav findings considering only a complex singlet scalar and $U(1)_D$ vector boson. Existence of a singlet fermion charged under $U(1)_D$ can give rise to dark matter in this model, preferably of non-thermal type, while incorporating additional fields can also generate light neutrino masses through typical low scale seesaw mechanisms like radiative or inverse seesaw.
We present time-of-arrival (TOA) measurements and timing models of 47 millisecond pulsars (MSPs) observed from 2004 to 2017 at the Arecibo Observatory and the Green Bank Telescope by the North American Nanohertz Observatory for Gravitational Waves (NANOGrav). The observing cadence was three to four weeks for most pulsars over most of this time span, with weekly observations of six sources. These data were collected for use in low-frequency gravitational wave searches and for other astrophysical purposes. We detail our observational methods and present a set of TOA measurements, based on narrowband analysis, in which many TOAs are calculated within narrow radio-frequency bands for data collected simultaneously across a wide bandwidth. A separate set of wideband TOAs will be presented in a companion paper. We detail a number of methodological changes compared to our previous work which yield a cleaner and more uniformly processed data set. Our timing models include several new astrometric and binary pulsar measurements, including previously unpublished values for the parallaxes of PSRs J1832-0836 and J2322+2057, the secular derivatives of the projected semi-major orbital axes of PSRs J0613-0200 and J2229+2643, and the first detection of the Shapiro delay in PSR J2145-0750. We report detectable levels of red noise in the time series for 14 pulsars. As a check on timing model reliability, we investigate the stability of astrometric parameters across data sets of different lengths. We report flux density measurements for all pulsars observed. Searches for stochastic and continuous gravitational waves using these data will be subjects of forthcoming publications.
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