String (physics)

Theoretical physics

Linguistics

Pulsar

COSMIC cancer database

Philosophy

Observatory

Particle physics

Astrophysics

Physics

Cosmic string

Gravitational wave

Gravitational wave background

Gravitational-wave observatory

Universe

Space (punctuation)

Physical Review Letters

The North American Nanohertz Observatory for Gravitational Waves has recently reported strong evidence for a stochastic common-spectrum process affecting the pulsar timing residuals in its 12.5-year data set. We demonstrate that this process admits an interpretation in terms of a stochastic gravitational-wave background emitted by a cosmic-string network in the early Universe. We study stable Nambu-Goto strings in dependence of their tension Gμ and loop size α and show that the entire viable parameter space will be probed by an array of future experiments.Received 14 October 2020Accepted 11 January 2021DOI:https://doi.org/10.1103/PhysRevLett.126.041305Published by the American Physical Society under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International license. Further distribution of this work must maintain attribution to the author(s) and the published article’s title, journal citation, and DOI.Published by the American Physical SocietyPhysics Subject Headings (PhySH)Research AreasCosmic strings & domain wallsGrand unified modelsGravitational wavesSpontaneous symmetry breakingPhysical SystemsNeutron stars & pulsarsGravitation, Cosmology & AstrophysicsParticles & Fields

Has NANOGrav Found First Evidence for Cosmic Strings?