We perform numerical simulations of gravitational waves (GWs) induced by hydrodynamic and hydromagnetic turbulent sources that might have been present at cosmological quantum chromodynamic (QCD) phase transitions. For turbulent energies of about 4% of the radiation energy density, the typical scale of such motions may have been a sizable fraction of the Hubble scale at that time. The resulting GWs are found to have an energy fraction of about $10^{-9}$ of the critical energy density in the nHz range today and may already have been observed by the NANOGrav collaboration. This is further made possible by our findings of shallower spectra proportional to the square root of the frequency for nonhelical hydromagnetic turbulence. This implies more power at low frequencies than for the steeper spectra previously anticipated. The behavior toward higher frequencies depends strongly on the nature of the turbulence. For vortical hydrodynamic and hydromagnetic turbulence, there is a sharp drop of spectral GW energy by up to five orders of magnitude in the presence of helicity, and somewhat less in the absence of helicity. For acoustic hydrodynamic turbulence, the sharp drop is replaced by a power law decay, albeit with a rather steep slope. Our study supports earlier findings of a quadratic scaling of the GW energy with the magnetic energy of the turbulence and inverse quadratic scaling with the peak frequency, which leads to larger GW energies under QCD conditions.
Detecting Chiral Gravitational Wave Background with a Dipole Pulsar Timing Array
National Astronomical Observatories, Chinese Academy of Sciences(中国科学院国家天文台);Hangzhou Institute for Advanced Study, University of Chinese Academy of Sciences(中国科学院大学杭州高等研究院);School of Astronomy and Space Science, University of Chinese Academy of Sciences(中国科学院大学天文与空间科学学院);Institute of Fundamental Physics and Quantum Technology, Ningbo University(宁波大学基础物理与量子技术研究所);Kavli Institute for the Physics and Mathematics of the Universe (WPI), The University of Tokyo(东京大学宇宙木理论研究所);Asia Pacific Center for Theoretical Physics(亚太理论物理中心);Leung Center for Cosmology and Particle Astrophysics, National Taiwan University(台湾大学梁氏宇宙学与粒子天体物理学研究中心);Yukawa Institute for Theoretical Physics, Kyoto University(京都大学汤川理论物理研究所)
Non-Gaussian timing residual skewness in pulsar timing arrays
Max Planck Institute for Gravitational Physics (Albert Einstein Institute), Leibnitz Universität Hannover(马克斯·普朗克引力物理研究所(爱因斯坦研究所),莱布尼茨汉诺威大学);Department of Physics, National Central University(国立中央大学物理系);Institute of Physics, Academia Sinica(台湾中央研究院物理研究所);Institute of Astronomy and Astrophysics, Academia Sinica(台湾中央研究院天文及天文物理研究所)