AI Article Synopsis
- A cosmological first-order phase transition could generate a stochastic gravitational wave background, particularly at nanohertz frequencies detectable through pulsar timing.
- The Parkes Pulsar Timing Array was used to search for this gravitational wave background, but no evidence was found for the expected spatial correlation indicative of such waves.
- The study provides constraints on models related to first-order phase transitions, showing that pulsar timing is effective in examining low-temperature transitions around 1-100 MeV.
Article Abstract
A cosmological first-order phase transition is expected to produce a stochastic gravitational wave background. If the phase transition temperature is on the MeV scale, the power spectrum of the induced stochastic gravitational waves peaks around nanohertz frequencies, and can thus be probed with high-precision pulsar timing observations. We search for such a stochastic gravitational wave background with the latest data set of the Parkes Pulsar Timing Array. We find no evidence for a Hellings-Downs spatial correlation as expected for a stochastic gravitational wave background. Therefore, we present constraints on first-order phase transition model parameters. Our analysis shows that pulsar timing is particularly sensitive to the low-temperature (T∼1-100 MeV) phase transition with a duration (β/H_{*})^{-1}∼10^{-2}-10^{-1} and therefore can be used to constrain the dark and QCD phase transitions.
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| http://dx.doi.org/10.1103/PhysRevLett.127.251303 | DOI Listing |
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