Searching for Gravitational Waves from Cosmological Phase Transitions with the NANOGrav 12.5-Year Dataset

Arzoumanian, Zaven; Baker, Paul T.; Blumer, Harsha; Bécsy, Bence; Brazier, Adam; Brook, Paul R.; Burke-Spolaor, Sarah; Charisi, Maria; Chatterjee, Shami; Chen, Siyuan; Cordes, James M.; Cornish, Neil J.; Crawford, Fronefield; Cromartie, H. Thankful; DeCesar, Megan E.; Demorest, Paul B.; Dolch, Timothy; Ellis, Justin A.; Ferrara, Elizabeth C.; Fiore, William; Fonseca, Emmanuel; Garver-Daniels, Nathan; Gentile, Peter A.; Good, Deborah C.; Hazboun, Jeffrey S.; Holgado, A. Miguel; Islo, Kristina; Jennings, Ross J.; Jones, Megan L.; Kaiser, Andrew R.; Kaplan, David L.; Kelley, Luke Zoltan; Key, Joey Shapiro; Laal, Nima; Lam, Michael T.; Lazio, T. W.; Lee, Vincent S. H.; Lorimer, Duncan R.; Luo, Jing; Lynch, Ryan S.; Madison, Dustin R.; McLaughlin, Maura A.; Mingarelli, Chiara M. F.; Mitridate, Andrea; Ng, Cherry; Nice, David J.; Pennucci, Timothy T.; Pol, Nihan S.; Ransom, Scott M.; Ray, Paul S.; Shapiro-Albert, Brent J.; Siemens, Xavier; Simon, Joseph; Spiewak, Renée; Stairs, Ingrid H.; Stinebring, Daniel R.; Stovall, Kevin; Sun, Jerry P.; Swiggum, Joseph K.; Taylor, Stephen R.; Turner, Jacob E.; Vallisneri, Michele; Vigeland, Sarah J.; Witt, Caitlin A.; Zurek, Kathryn M.

doi:10.1103/physrevlett.127.251302

Title: Searching for Gravitational Waves from Cosmological Phase Transitions with the NANOGrav 12.5-Year Dataset

Journal Article · 14 December 2021 · Physical Review Letters

DOI: https://doi.org/10.1103/physrevlett.127.251302 · OSTI ID:1980239

Arzoumanian, Zaven ^[1]; Baker, Paul T.; Blumer, Harsha; Bécsy, Bence; Brazier, Adam; Brook, Paul R.; Burke-Spolaor, Sarah; Charisi, Maria; Chatterjee, Shami; Chen, Siyuan; Cordes, James M.; Cornish, Neil J.; Crawford, Fronefield; Cromartie, H. Thankful; DeCesar, Megan E.; Demorest, Paul B.; Dolch, Timothy; Ellis, Justin A.; Ferrara, Elizabeth C.; Fiore, William more »

OSTI

We search for a first-order phase transition gravitational wave signal in 45 pulsars from the NANOGrav 12.5-year dataset. We find that the data can be modeled in terms of a strong first order phase transition taking place at temperatures below the electroweak scale. However, we do not observe any strong preference for a phase-transition interpretation of the signal over the standard astrophysical interpretation in terms of supermassive black hole mergers; but we expect to gain additional discriminating power with future datasets, improving the signal to noise ratio and extending the sensitivity window to lower frequencies. An interesting open question is how well gravitational wave observatories could separate such signals.

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Research Organization:: California Institute of Technology (CalTech), Pasadena, CA (United States)

Sponsoring Organization:: National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA); National Science Foundation (NSF); USDOE Office of Science (SC), High Energy Physics (HEP)

Contributing Organization:: NANOGrav Collaboration

Grant/Contract Number:: SC0021431

OSTI ID:: 1980239

Journal Information:: Physical Review Letters, Journal Name: Physical Review Letters Journal Issue: 25 Vol. 127; ISSN 0031-9007

Publisher:: American Physical Society (APS)Copyright Statement

Country of Publication:: United States

Language:: English

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Title: Searching for Gravitational Waves from Cosmological Phase Transitions with the NANOGrav 12.5-Year Dataset

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