The NANOGrav 15 yr Data Set: Search for Signals from New Physics

Date

2023-07-01

Author

Afzal, Adeela
Agazie, Gabriella
Anumarlapudi, Akash M.
Archibald, Anne
Arzoumanian, Zaven T.
Baker, Paul
Becsy, Bence
Blanco-Pillado, Jose Juan
Blecha, Laura K.
Boddy, Kimberly
Brazier, Adam R.
Brook, Paul
Burke-Spolaor, Sarah
Burnette, Rand
Case, Robin
Charisi, Maria
Chatterjee, Shami
Chatziioannou, Katerina D.
Cheeseboro, Belinda
Chen, Siyuan
Cohen, Tyler M.
Cordes, James J.
Cornish, Neil
Crawford, Fronefield
Cromartie, H. Thankful
Crowter, Kathryn J.
Cutler, Curt E.
DeCesar, Megan
DeGan, Dallas B.
Demorest, Paul
Deng, Heling
Dolch, Timothy
Drachler, Brendan
von Eckardstein, Richard C.
Ferrara, Elizabeth
Fiore, William
Fonseca, Emmanuel E.
Freedman, Gabriel
Garver-Daniels, Nate A.
Gentile, Peter A.
Gersbach, Kyle
Glaser, Joseph C.
Good, Deborah
Guertin, Lydia
Gueltekin, Kayhan S.
Hazboun, Jeffrey
Hourihane, Sophie
Islo, Kristina J.
Jennings, Ross D.
Johnson, Aaron L.
Jones, Megan R.
Kaiser, Andrew L.
Kaplan, David
Kelley, Luke Zoltan
Kerr, Matthew S.
Key, Joey
Laal, Nima T.
Lam, Michael G.
Lamb, William
W. Lazio, T. Joseph
Lee, Vincent S. H.
Lewandowska, Natalia R.
Lino dos Santos, Rafael B.
Littenberg, Tyson
Liu, Tingting R.
Lorimer, Duncan
Luo, Jing S.
Lynch, Ryan
Ma, Chung-Pei R.
Madison, Dustin
McEwen, Alexander W.
McKee, James A.
McLaughlin, Maura
McMann, Natasha W.
Meyers, Bradley M.
Meyers, Patrick
Mingarelli, Chiara M. F.
Mitridate, Andrea
Nay, Jonathan
Natarajan, Priyamvada
Ng, Cherry J.
Nice, David
Ocker, Stella Koch D.
Olum, Ken T.
Pennucci, Timothy
Perera, Benetge B. P.
Petrov, Polina S.
Pol, Nihan A.
Radovan, Henri M.
Ransom, Scott S.
Ray, Paul D.
Romano, Joseph C.
Sardesai, Shashwat
Schmiedekamp, Ann
Schmiedekamp, Carl
Schmitz, Kai
Schroeder, Tobias
Schult, Levi J.
Shapiro-Albert, Brent
Siemens, Xavier
Simon, Joseph S.
Siwek, Magdalena H.
Stairs, Ingrid R.
Stinebring, Daniel
Stovall, Kevin
Stratmann, Peter P.
Sun, Jerry
Susobhanan, Abhimanyu K.
Swiggum, Joseph
Taylor, Jacob R.
Taylor, Stephen
Trickle, Tanner E.
Turner, Jacob
Ünal, Caner
Vallisneri, Michele
Verma, Sonali J.
Vigeland, Sarah M.
Wahl, Haley
Wang, Qiaohong A.
Witt, Caitlin
Wright, David
Young, Olivia M.
Zurek, Kathryn

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The 15 yr pulsar timing data set collected by the North American Nanohertz Observatory for Gravitational Waves (NANOGrav) shows positive evidence for the presence of a low-frequency gravitational-wave (GW) background. In this paper, we investigate potential cosmological interpretations of this signal, specifically cosmic inflation, scalar-induced GWs, first-order phase transitions, cosmic strings, and domain walls. We find that, with the exception of stable cosmic strings of field theory origin, all these models can reproduce the observed signal. When compared to the standard interpretation in terms of inspiraling supermassive black hole binaries (SMBHBs), many cosmological models seem to provide a better fit resulting in Bayes factors in the range from 10 to 100. However, these results strongly depend on modeling assumptions about the cosmic SMBHB population and, at this stage, should not be regarded as evidence for new physics. Furthermore, we identify excluded parameter regions where the predicted GW signal from cosmological sources significantly exceeds the NANOGrav signal. These parameter constraints are independent of the origin of the NANOGrav signal and illustrate how pulsar timing data provide a new way to constrain the parameter space of these models. Finally, we search for deterministic signals produced by models of ultralight dark matter (ULDM) and dark matter substructures in the Milky Way. We find no evidence for either of these signals and thus report updated constraints on these models. In the case of ULDM, these constraints outperform torsion balance and atomic clock constraints for ULDM coupled to electrons, muons, or gluons.

URI

https://hdl.handle.net/11511/116276

Collections

Department of Physics, Article