Pith. sign in

REVIEW 5 cited by

Whispers from the dark side: Confronting light new physics with NANOGrav data

Not yet reviewed by Pith; the record is open.

This paper has not been read by Pith yet. Machine review is queued; the pith claim, tier, and objections will appear here once it completes.

SPECIMEN: schema-true, not a live event

T0 review · schema-true

One-sentence machine reading of the paper's core claim.

pith:XXXXXXXX · record.json · timestamp

arxiv 2009.11875 v1 pith:4HJC3UJU submitted 2020-09-24 astro-ph.CO hep-ph

classification astro-ph.COhep-ph
keywords dataaxionlikenanogravobtainedphysicstimesability
verification ladder T0 review T1 audit T2 compute T3 formal
0 comments
abstract

The NANOGrav collaboration has recently observed first evidence of a gravitational wave background (GWB) in pulsar timing data. Here we explore the possibility that this GWB is due to new physics, and show that the signal can be well fit also with peaked spectra like the ones expected from phase transitions (PTs) or from the dynamics of axion like particles (ALPs) in the early universe. We find that a good fit to the data is obtained for a very strong PT at temperatures around 1 MeV to 10 MeV. For the ALP explanation the best fit is obtained for a decay constant of $F \approx 5\times 10^{17}$ GeV and an axion mass of $2\times 10^{-13}$ eV. We also illustrate the ability of PTAs to constrain the parameter space of these models, and obtain limits which are already comparable to other cosmological bounds.

Discussion (0). Continue with ORCID to comment.

Forward citations

Cited by 5 Pith papers

Reviewed papers in the Pith corpus that reference this work. Sorted by Pith novelty score. Full citation record

  1. Quantum field nucleating and Wigner functions

    hep-th 2026-07 conditional novelty 7.5 of 10

    The one-loop over-the-barrier nucleation rate in a thermal QFT is Affleck’s formula generalized to fields, not Linde’s, and still carries quantum prefactor effects even when the bounce is classically symmetric.

  2. Can the universe be matter-dominated after a supercooled first-order phase transition?

    hep-ph 2026-07 conditional novelty 7.0 of 10

    After a supercooled first-order phase transition, the scalar field's equation of state is set by the bubble-wall Lorentz factor γ*, and matter domination is delayed until a/a* ≃ γ* in the free-streaming limit.

  3. Beyond the Daisy Chain: Running and the 3D EFT View of Supercooled Phase Transitions

    hep-ph 2025-11 conditional novelty 5.0 of 10

    With renormalisation-group running included, the one-loop high-temperature Daisy-resummed potential at µ=πT reproduces the phase-transition parameters of the two-loop dimensionally reduced EFT, while the no-running on...

  4. Implications for Pulsar Timing Arrays of Sub-solar Black Hole Detections: From LVK to Einstein Telescope and Cosmic Explorer

    astro-ph.CO 2025-08 conditional novelty 5.0 of 10

    A Bayesian analysis shows that a future sub-solar PBH detection would make the primordial SIGW interpretation of PTA data favored over the SMBH interpretation, but this preference is driven by the detection prior.

  5. Can a secluded self-interacting dark sector generate detectable gravitational waves?

    hep-ph 2025-02 conditional novelty 4.0 of 10

    In a secluded self-interacting dark sector with a dark U(1)' and dark radiation, existing Neff and Lyman-alpha limits remove nearly all gravitational-wave-detectable parameter space; one charge assignment keeps a smal...

Pith tools