English

Extra-tensor-induced origin for the PTA signal: No primordial black hole production

Cosmology and Nongalactic Astrophysics 2023-10-04 v2 General Relativity and Quantum Cosmology

Abstract

Recently, pulsar timing array (PTA) collaborations announced evidence for an isotropic stochastic gravitational wave (GW) background. The origin of the PTA signal can be astrophysical or cosmological. In the latter case, the so-called secondary scalar-induced GW scenario is one of the viable explanations, but it has a potentially serious issue of the overproduction of primordial black holes (PBHs) due to the enhanced curvature perturbation. In this letter, we present a new interpretation of the PTA signal. Namely, it is originated from an extra spectator tensor field that exists on top of the metric tensor perturbation. As the energy density of the extra tensor field is always subdominant, it cannot lead to the formation of PBHs. Thus our primordial-tensor-induced scenario is free from the PBH overproduction issue.

Keywords

Cite

@article{arxiv.2307.13109,
  title  = {Extra-tensor-induced origin for the PTA signal: No primordial black hole production},
  author = {Mohammad Ali Gorji and Misao Sasaki and Teruaki Suyama},
  journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:2307.13109},
  year   = {2023}
}

Comments

5 pages, version to appear in PLB