No Pulsar Timing Noise from Brownian Motion of the Sun

Abstract

It was recently claimed (arXiv:2405.05410 [gr-qc]) that evidence for a stochastic gravitational wave background observed by pulsar timing arrays can be attributed instead to random perturbations of the Sun's motion by transiting asteroids. I show that that this would lead to a large dipole component accompanying a much smaller quadrupolar perturbation of pulsar timing signals, which would not be confused with a gravitational wave signal. Such an anomalous dipole would have been detected and identified as a spurious background by the PTA collaborations, if it existed.

3 pages, 1 figure. Comment on arXiv:2405.05410 [gr-qc], accepted for publication in RNAAS