Using Pulsar Parameter Drifts to Detect Sub-Nanohertz Gravitational Waves

Abstract

Gravitational waves with frequencies below 1~nHz are notoriously difficult to detect. With periods exceeding current experimental lifetimes, they induce slow drifts in observables rather than periodic correlations. Observables with well-known intrinsic contributions provide a means to probe this regime. In this work, we demonstrate the viability of using observed pulsar timing parameters to discover such "ultralow" frequency gravitational waves, presenting two complementary observables for which the systematic shift induced by ultralow-frequency gravitational waves can be extracted. Using existing data for these parameters, we search the ultralow frequency regime for continuous-wave signals, finding a sensitivity near the expected prediction from inspirals of supermassive black holes. We do not see an excess in the data, setting a limit on the strain of $1.3\times 10^{-12}$ at $450\mathrm{pHz}$ with a sensitivity dropping approximately quadratically with frequency until $10\mathrm{pHz}$. Our search method opens a new frequency range for gravitational wave detection and has profound implications for astrophysics, cosmology, and particle physics.

20 pages, 4 figures, 4 appendices; v2: updated to match PRL

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Cited by in corpus (8)

• Charting the Nanohertz Gravitational Wave Sky with Pulsar Timing Arrays
• Tomography of flavoured leptogenesis with primordial blue gravitational waves
• A Pulsar-Based Map of Galactic Acceleration
• First astrometric constraints on parity-violation in the gravitational wave background
• On Pulsar Timing Detection of Ultralight Vector Dark Matter
• Probing Picohertz Gravitational Waves with Pulsars
• Can we hear beats with pulsar timing arrays?
• Time-dependent deflection reconstruction: new technique to search for gravitational waves with the cosmic microwave background