Probing high frequency gravitational waves with pulsars

TL;DR

This paper investigates how pulsar magnetospheres can be used to detect high-frequency gravitational waves through graviton-photon conversion, providing new constraints and expanding observational capabilities.

Contribution

It introduces a novel method leveraging pulsar magnetic fields to detect high-frequency gravitational waves and constrains their stochastic background in previously unexplored frequency ranges.

Findings

Enhanced photon polarization conversion in pulsar magnetic fields.

Constraints on stochastic gravitational waves in the 10^8-10^9 Hz and 10^13-10^27 Hz ranges.

Fills observational gap in high-frequency gravitational wave detection.

Abstract

We study graviton-photon conversion in magnetosphere of a pulsar and explore the possibility of detecting high frequency gravitational waves with pulsar observations. It is shown that conversion of one polarization mode of photons can be enhanced significantly due to strong magnetic fields around a pulsar. We also constrain stochastic gravitational waves in frequency range of $10^{8}-10^{9}\,$Hz and $10^{13}-10^{27}\,$Hz by using data of observations of the Crab pulsar and the Geminga pulsar. Our method widely fills the gap among existing high frequency gravitational wave experiments and boosts the frequency frontier in gravitational wave observations.