English

Cosmic Superstrings Revisited in Light of NANOGrav 15-Year Data

Cosmology and Nongalactic Astrophysics 2023-07-06 v2 High Energy Astrophysical Phenomena General Relativity and Quantum Cosmology High Energy Physics - Phenomenology High Energy Physics - Theory

Abstract

We analyze cosmic superstring models in light of NANOGrav 15-year pulsar timing data. A good fit is found for a string tension Gμ10121011G \mu \sim 10^{-12} - 10^{-11} and a string intercommutation probability p103101p \sim 10^{-3} - 10^{-1}. Extrapolation to higher frequencies assuming standard Big Bang cosmology is compatible at the 68\% CL with the current LIGO/Virgo/KAGRA upper limit on a stochastic gravitational wave background in the 10 to 100 Hz range. The superstring interpretation of the NANOGrav data would be robustly testable by future experiments even in modified cosmological scenarios.

Keywords

Cite

@article{arxiv.2306.17147,
  title  = {Cosmic Superstrings Revisited in Light of NANOGrav 15-Year Data},
  author = {John Ellis and Marek Lewicki and Chunshan Lin and Ville Vaskonen},
  journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:2306.17147},
  year   = {2023}
}

Comments

7 pages 4 figures. Typos fixed and new references added