Pulsar hints for gravitational waves from cosmic strings?

by Dr Kai Schmitz (CERN)

Thursday 11 Nov 2021, 17:00 → 18:30 Asia/Seoul

Title: Pulsar hints for gravitational waves from cosmic strings?

Speaker: Dr Kai Schmitz (CERN)

Abstract: All major pulsar timing array (PTA) collaborations—NANOGrav, Parkes PTA, and EPTA—are now seeing indications of a new stochastic process in their latest data sets.  If confirmed in the future, this new signal may turn out to be the first glimpse of a stochastic gravitational-wave background at nanohertz frequencies.  In this talk, I will review the properties of the new signal and discuss its interpretation in terms of gravitational waves emitted by a network of cosmic strings in the early Universe.  I will especially distinguish between stable and metastable cosmic strings, both of which represent realistic and intriguing possibilities in the context of grand unified theories (GUTs).  As for metastable cosmic strings, I will present some theoretical advancements in the description of gravitational-wave emission by a decaying cosmic-string network based on recent work in collaboration with Wilfried Buchmüller and Valerie Domcke [2107.04578].  This will lead to the conclusion that metastable cosmic strings are not only capable of explaining the new PTA signal in the nanohertz band; unlike stable cosmic strings, they also predict a signal within the reach of current-generation ground-based interferometers in the audio band.  On their way to design sensitivity, existing gravitational-wave experiments will thus have a realistic chance to probe particle physics processes close to the GUT scale via the observation of gravitational waves from metastable cosmic strings.

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