No Pulsar Timing Noise from Brownian Motion of the Sun
Abstract
It was recently claimed that evidence for a stochastic gravitational wave background observed by pulsar timing arrays can be attributed instead to random perturbations of the Sun's motion by transiting asteroids. I show that that this would lead to a large dipole component accompanying a much smaller quadrupolar perturbation of pulsar timing signals, which would not be confused with a gravitational wave signal. Such an anomalous dipole would have been detected and identified as a spurious background by the PTA collaborations, if it existed.
- Publication:
-
Research Notes of the American Astronomical Society
- Pub Date:
- September 2024
- DOI:
- 10.3847/2515-5172/ad7e19
- arXiv:
- arXiv:2409.13692
- Bibcode:
- 2024RNAAS...8..240C
- Keywords:
-
- Gravitational wave astronomy;
- 675;
- General Relativity and Quantum Cosmology;
- Astrophysics - Earth and Planetary Astrophysics;
- Astrophysics - Solar and Stellar Astrophysics
- E-Print:
- 3 pages, 1 figure. Comment on arXiv:2405.05410 [gr-qc], accepted for publication in RNAAS