Hunting for Gravitational Waves with Massive Gravitons from Inspiralling Double Neutron Star Systems with Pulsar Clocks

TL;DR

This paper proposes using pulse frequency shifts in pulsars within double neutron star systems as a novel method to detect high-frequency gravitational waves from these systems, especially considering massive graviton effects.

Contribution

It introduces a new approach to detect high-frequency GWs via pulse frequency shifts in pulsars, considering the impact of massive gravitons and the correlation of timing residuals.

Findings

Pulse frequency shifts can indicate high-frequency GWs from DNS systems.

Sensitivity analysis shows potential to detect massive graviton effects.

Correlation of pulsar timing residuals can enhance GW detection.

Abstract

Pulsars, especially millisecond pulsars, are intrinsically very stable celestial clocks, and their great pulse period stability open up a wide range of potential applications to astronomical phenomena, such as a natural detector for very low frequency ($10^{-7}-10^{-9}$ Hz) gravitational waves (GWs) background from supermassive black hole binaries. Double neutron star (DNS) binary systems, containing one or two radio pulsars, lose orbital energy by gravitational radiation, which leads to the orbital shrink. As a result, two neutron stars get closer and closer, during which it contributes to the emission of high frequency GWs of $1-10^4$ Hz. In this paper, we investigate the frequency shift of pulse signal for radio pulsars in DNS system that is induced by the emission of GWs from the system. We point out that the pulse frequency shift of radio signal in these systems can be a potential tool to hunt for the high-frequency GWs, with massive gravitons, from DNS systems, which resorts to a temporal shift of gravitational constant $\delta G(t)/G$. The sensitivity to high-frequency GWs from DNS by radio pulse frequency shift is discussed. The correlation between timing residuals of pulsar pair in double radio pulsars, such as the system PSR 0737-3039 A(B), is also considered.