1. Searching for Gravitational Waves from Cosmological Phase Transitions with the NANOGrav 12.5-Year Dataset.
- Author
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Arzoumanian Z, Baker PT, Blumer H, Bécsy B, Brazier A, Brook PR, Burke-Spolaor S, Charisi M, Chatterjee S, Chen S, Cordes JM, Cornish NJ, Crawford F, Cromartie HT, DeCesar ME, Demorest PB, Dolch T, Ellis JA, Ferrara EC, Fiore W, Fonseca E, Garver-Daniels N, Gentile PA, Good DC, Hazboun JS, Holgado AM, Islo K, Jennings RJ, Jones ML, Kaiser AR, Kaplan DL, Kelley LZ, Key JS, Laal N, Lam MT, Lazio TJW, Lee VSH, Lorimer DR, Luo J, Lynch RS, Madison DR, McLaughlin MA, Mingarelli CMF, Mitridate A, Ng C, Nice DJ, Pennucci TT, Pol NS, Ransom SM, Ray PS, Shapiro-Albert BJ, Siemens X, Simon J, Spiewak R, Stairs IH, Stinebring DR, Stovall K, Sun JP, Swiggum JK, Taylor SR, Turner JE, Vallisneri M, Vigeland SJ, Witt CA, and Zurek KM
- Abstract
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.
- Published
- 2021
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