2012/12/31 by Lam Hui, Sean T. McWilliams, I-Sheng Yang · 2 citations
Physics and Astronomy · #Astronomy #Cosmology and Gravitation Theories #Detector #Gravitational wave #Gravitational-wave observatory #Optics #Particle physics #Physics #Pulsars and Gravitational Waves Research #Quantum, superfluid, helium dynamics #Resonance (particle physics) #astro-ph.CO #astro-ph.GA #astro-ph.HE #gr-qc #hep-ph
paper · pdf · doi:10.1103/physrevd.87.084009
8 pages, 1 figure. version 2, clarified several points thanks to private communications with Marc Kamionkowski
arxiv created 2013/03/01 · openalex publication_date 2013/04/02 · arxiv updated 2013/05/27 · openalex created_date 2025/10/10 · openalex updated_date 2026/08/05
Gravitational waves at suitable frequencies can resonantly interact with a binary system, inducing changes to its orbit. A stochastic gravitational wave background causes the orbital elements of the binary to execute a classic random walk, with the variance of orbital elements growing with time. The lack of such a random walk in binaries that have been monitored with high precision over long time scales can thus be used to place an upper bound on the gravitational wave background. Using periastron time data from the Hulse-Taylor binary pulsar spanning \ensuremath∼30 years, we obtain a bound of hc<7.9\ifmmode×\else\texttimes\fi10^\ensuremath-14 at \ensuremath∼10^\ensuremath-4 Hz, where hc is the strain amplitude per logarithmic frequency interval. Our constraint complements those from pulsar timing arrays, which probe much lower frequencies, and ground-based gravitational wave observations, which probe much higher frequencies. Interesting sources in our frequency band, which overlaps the lower sensitive frequencies of proposed space-based observatories, include white dwarf/supermassive black hole binaries in the early/late stages of inspiral, and TeV-scale preheating or phase transitions. The bound improves as (time span)^\ensuremath-2 and (sampling rate)^\ensuremath-1/2. The Hulse-Taylor constraint can be improved to \ensuremath∼3.8\ifmmode×\else\texttimes\fi10^\ensuremath-15 with a suitable observational campaign over the next decade. Our approach can also be applied to other binaries, including (with suitable care) the Earth-Moon system, to obtain constraints at different frequencies. The observation of additional binary pulsars with the Square Kilometer Array could reach a sensitivity of hc\ensuremath∼3\ifmmode×\else\texttimes\fi10^\ensuremath-17.