Whispers from the dark side: Confronting light new physics with NANOGrav data

Ratzinger, Wolfram; Schwaller, Pedro

doi:10.21468/SciPostPhys.10.2.047

SciPost Physics

Whispers from the dark side: Confronting light new physics with NANOGrav data

Wolfram Ratzinger, Pedro Schwaller

SciPost Phys. 10, 047 (2021) · published 23 February 2021

doi: 10.21468/SciPostPhys.10.2.047
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Submissions/Reports

Abstract

The NANOGrav collaboration has recently observed first evidence of a grav- itational wave background (GWB) in pulsar timing data. Here we explore the possibility that this GWB is due to new physics, and show that the signal can be well fit also with peaked spectra like the ones expected from phase transitions (PTs) or from the dynamics of axion like particles (ALPs) in the early universe. We find that a good fit to the data is obtained for a very strong PT at temperatures around 1 MeV to 10 MeV. For the ALP explanation the best fit is obtained for a decay constant of F ≈ 5 × 10^17 GeV and an axion mass of 2 × 10^−13 eV. We also illustrate the ability of PTAs to constrain the parameter space of these models, and obtain limits which are already comparable to other cosmological bounds.

TY  - JOUR
PB  - SciPost Foundation
DO  - 10.21468/SciPostPhys.10.2.047
TI  - Whispers from the dark side: Confronting light new physics with NANOGrav data
PY  - 2021/02/23
UR  - https://scipost.org/SciPostPhys.10.2.047
JF  - SciPost Physics
JA  - SciPost Phys.
VL  - 10
IS  - 2
SP  - 047
A1  - Ratzinger, Wolfram
AU  - Schwaller, Pedro
AB  - The NANOGrav collaboration has recently observed first evidence of a grav- itational wave background (GWB) in pulsar timing data. Here we explore the possibility that this GWB is due to new physics, and show that the signal can be well fit also with peaked spectra like the ones expected from phase transitions (PTs) or from the dynamics of axion like particles (ALPs) in the early universe. We find that a good fit to the data is obtained for a very strong PT at temperatures around 1 MeV to 10 MeV. For the ALP explanation the best fit is obtained for a decay constant of F ≈ 5 × 10^17 GeV and an axion mass of 2 × 10^−13 eV. We also illustrate the ability of PTAs to constrain the parameter space of these models, and obtain limits which are already comparable to other cosmological bounds.
ER  -

@Article{10.21468/SciPostPhys.10.2.047,
	title={{Whispers from the dark side: Confronting light new physics with NANOGrav data}},
	author={Wolfram Ratzinger and Pedro Schwaller},
	journal={SciPost Phys.},
	volume={10},
	pages={047},
	year={2021},
	publisher={SciPost},
	doi={10.21468/SciPostPhys.10.2.047},
	url={https://scipost.org/10.21468/SciPostPhys.10.2.047},
}

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Authors / Affiliation: mappings to Contributors and Organizations

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¹ Wolfram Ratzinger,
¹ Pedro Schwaller

¹ Johannes Gutenberg-Universität Mainz / Johannes Gutenberg University of Mainz

Funder for the research work leading to this publication

Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft / German Research FoundationDeutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft [DFG]