Isocurvature Induced Gravitational Waves at Pulsar Timing Arrays

TL;DR

This paper explores how different types of primordial isocurvature perturbations induce gravitational waves detectable by pulsar timing arrays, providing new constraints on early Universe physics beyond the standard model.

Contribution

It offers a comprehensive analysis of four isocurvature types, reformulates initial conditions with coupled neutrinos, and derives novel constraints using recent NANOGrav data.

Findings

Neutrino isocurvature behaves similarly to CDM isocurvature with a conversion between radiation and matter sectors.

GWs from free-streaming dark radiation differ qualitatively from those from CDM due to anisotropic stress.

Constraints on isocurvature at scales around 10^6 Mpc^{-1} are established, complementing large-scale cosmological observations.

Abstract

Gravitational waves (GWs) are powerful probes of new physics in the early Universe. In particular, GWs induced by primordial isocurvature perturbations encode information of novel dynamics beyond the standard $\Lambda$CDM model. Existing studies of isocurvature induced GWs focus on a particular type: cold dark matter (CDM) isocurvature. In this work, we present a more comprehensive study of four kinds of isocurvature involving CDM, baryons, neutrinos and free-streaming dark radiation (DR). We first reformulate initial conditions of isocurvature with coupled neutrinos because modes relevant for observations at Pulsar Timing Arrays enter the horizon before neutrino decoupling. With these new initial conditions, neutrino isocurvature is phenomenologically similar to CDM isocurvature up to an overall coefficient, which leads to an interesting conversion of isocurvature between radiation and matter sectors. We then find that the spectrum of isocurvature induced GWs from free-streaming DR is qualitatively different than that from CDM due to the presence of anisotropic stress. Unlike GWs induced by CDM isocurvature that are suppressed at high frequencies due to matter density being suppressed at early times, DR isocurvature induced GWs is proportional to the constant ratio between DR density and total radiation. Finally, we utilize two general parametrizations of the isocurvature power spectrum: a delta function and a broken power law, and derive novel constraints with recent NANOGrav data. Our results set stringent constraints on isocurvature around $10^{6}\,\textrm{Mpc}^{-1}$, which are complementary to cosmological observations at large scales.