Detecting the Stochastic Gravitational Wave Background from Massive Gravity with Pulsar Timing Arrays

Abstract

We explore the potential of Pulsar Timing Arrays (PTAs) such as NANOGrav, EPTA, and PPTA to detect the Stochastic Gravitational Wave Background (SGWB) in theories of massive gravity. In General Relativity, the function describing the dependence of the correlation between the arrival times of signals from two pulsars on the angle between them is known as the Hellings-Downs curve. We compute the analogous overlap reduction function for massive gravity, including the additional polarization states and the correction due to the mass of the graviton, and compare the result with the Hellings-Downs curve. The primary result is a complete analytical form for the analog Hellings-Downs curve, providing a starting point for future numerical studies aimed at a detailed comparison between PTA data and the predictions of massive gravity. We study both the massless limit and the stationary limit as checks on our calculation, and discuss how our formalism also allows us to study the impact of massive spin-2 dark matter candidates on data from PTAs.

arXiv comment27 pages, 8 figures

References in corpus (15)

• Theoretical Aspects of Massive Gravity
• On Kaluza-Klein States from Large Extra Dimensions
• The NANOGrav 12.5-year Data Set: Search For An Isotropic Stochastic Gravitational-Wave Background
• Gravitational-Wave Stochastic Background from Kinks and Cusps on Cosmic Strings
• Optimal strategies for gravitational wave stochastic background searches in pulsar timing data
• Graviton Mass Bounds
• Relic Gravitational Waves and Cosmology
• Detecting massive gravitons using pulsar timing arrays
• Mapping gravitational-wave backgrounds in modified theories of gravity using pulsar timing arrays
• Pulsar-timing arrays, astrometry, and gravitational waves
• Subluminal stochastic gravitational waves in pulsar-timing arrays and astrometry
• Helicity Formalism for Spin-2 Particles
• Polarization distortions of lensed gravitational waves
• Measuring stochastic gravitational-wave energy beyond general relativity
• Limit on graviton mass using stacked galaxy cluster catalogs from SPT-SZ, Planck-SZ and SDSS-redMaPPer

Cited by in corpus (23)

• Search for Stochastic Gravitational-Wave Background from Massive Gravity in the NANOGrav 12.5-Year Data Set
• Pulsar and cosmic variances of pulsar timing-array correlation measurements of the stochastic gravitational wave background
• Pulsar timing residual induced by ultralight tensor dark matter
• Stochastic gravitational wave background phenomenology in a pulsar timing array
• Constraining gravitational wave propagation using pulsar timing array correlations
• Hunting the stochastic gravitational wave background in pulsar timing array cross correlations through theoretical uncertainty
• A Test of Gravity with Pulsar Timing Arrays
• Pulsar Timing Residual induced by Wideband Ultralight Dark Matter with Spin 0, 1, 2
• Constraining the Graviton Mass with the NANOGrav 15-Year Data Set
• Testing gravity with cosmic variance-limited pulsar timing array correlations
• Constraints on the velocity of gravitational waves from NANOGrav 15-year data set
• Beyond the Hellings-Downs curve: Non-Einsteinian gravitational waves in pulsar timing array correlations
• Principles of Gravitational-Wave Detection with Pulsar Timing Arrays
• Correlations for an anisotropic polarized stochastic gravitational wave background in pulsar timing arrays
• Charting the Nanohertz Gravitational Wave Sky with Pulsar Timing Arrays
• Unveiling the Graviton Mass Bounds through Analysis of 2023 Pulsar Timing Array Data Releases
• Angular correlation and deformed Hellings-Downs curve from spin-2 ultralight dark matter
• Non-linear corrections of overlap reduction functions for pulsar timing arrays
• Unveiling the existence of nontensorial gravitational-wave polarizations from individual supermassive black hole binaries with pulsar timing arrays
• Pulsar timing and polarimetry: results and perspectives
• Connecting Inflation to the NANOGrav 15-year Data Set via Massive Gravity
• Overlap reduction function for gravitational wave detectors in an expanding Universe
• Spatial Correlation between Pulsars from Interfering Gravitational-Wave Sources in Massive Gravity