English

An upper bound from helioseismology on the stochastic background of gravitational waves

General Relativity and Quantum Cosmology 2014-04-01 v2 Solar and Stellar Astrophysics

Abstract

The universe is expected to be permeated by a stochastic background of gravitational radiation of astrophysical and cosmological origin. This background is capable of exciting oscillations in solar-like stars. Here we show that solar-like oscillators can be employed as giant hydrodynamical detectors for such a background in the muHz to mHz frequency range, which has remained essentially unexplored until today. We demonstrate this approach by using high-precision radial velocity data for the Sun to constrain the normalized energy density of the stochastic gravitational-wave background around 0.11 mHz. These results open up the possibility for asteroseismic missions like CoRoT and Kepler to probe fundamental physics.

Keywords

Cite

@article{arxiv.1401.6888,
  title  = {An upper bound from helioseismology on the stochastic background of gravitational waves},
  author = {Daniel M. Siegel and Markus Roth},
  journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:1401.6888},
  year   = {2014}
}

Comments

6 pages, 2 figures. Updated to match published version