NANOGrav signal from axion inflation

Abstract

Several pulsar timing arrays including NANOGrav, EPTA, PPTA, and CPTA have recently reported the observation of a stochastic background of gravitational wave spectrum in the nano-Hz frequencies. An inflationary interpretation of this observation is challenging from various aspects. We report that such a signal can arise from the Chern-Simons coupling in axion inflation, where a pseudoscalar inflaton couples to a (massive) $U(1)$ gauge field, leading to efficient production of a transverse gauge mode. Such tachyonic particle production during inflation exponentially enhances the primordial perturbations and leads to a unique parity-violating gravitational wave spectrum, that remains flat near the CMB scales but becomes blue-tilted at smaller scales. We identify the parameter space consistent with various cosmological constraints and show that the resultant gravitational wave signals can provide extra contribution on top of the standard astrophysical contribution from inspiraling supermassive black hole binaries towards explaining the observed excess at NANOGrav. The parity-violating nature of the signal can be probed in future interferometers, distinguishing it from most other new physics signals attempting to explain the NANOGrav result.

arXiv comment11 pages + references, 6 figures, minor changes to match published version

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• Simultaneously probing the sound speed and equation of state of the early Universe with pulsar timing arrays
• Broken blue-tilted inflationary gravitational waves: a joint analysis of NANOGrav 15-year and BICEP/Keck 2018 data
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• Search for Non-Tensorial Gravitational-Wave Backgrounds in the NANOGrav 15-Year Data Set
• Enhancement of gravitational waves at Q-ball decay including non-linear density perturbations
• Null energy condition violation during inflation and pulsar timing array observations
• Constraints on holographic QCD phase transitions from PTA observations
• Unveiling the nonlinear dynamics of a rolling axion during inflation
• Prospects for Taiji to detect a gravitational-wave background from cosmic strings
• Beyond the Hellings-Downs curve: Non-Einsteinian gravitational waves in pulsar timing array correlations
• Correlations for an anisotropic polarized stochastic gravitational wave background in pulsar timing arrays
• Testing scale-invariant inflation against cosmological data
• Can we distinguish the adiabatic fluctuations and isocurvature fluctuations with pulsar timing arrays?
• Parity-violating scalar trispectrum from a rolling axion during inflation
• Probing Parity Violation in the Stochastic Gravitational Wave Background with Astrometry
• Constraining the history of reheating with the NANOGrav 15-year data
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• Search for the non-linearities of gravitational wave background in NANOGrav 15-year data set
• Implications of pulsar timing arrays for Gauss-Bonnet Inflation
• Gravitational Waves from Gauge Quanta Produced during Inflation