Big Bang Nucleosynthesis Confronts Domain Walls and First-Order Phase Transitions as the Pulsar Timing Array Explanations
hep-ph, astro-ph.CO
Submitted: 2026-09-22
Updated: 2026-09-22
Comments: 5 pages, 2 Figures + 23 pages Appendix and 5 Figures
License: http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/
The gist: Pulsar timing arrays (PTAs) have detected a nanohertz gravitational-wave background, often attributed to annihilating domain walls (DWs) or first-order phase transitions (FOPTs).
Terminology
Abstract
Pulsar timing arrays (PTAs) have detected a nanohertz gravitational-wave background, often attributed to annihilating domain walls (DWs) or first-order phase transitions (FOPTs). Their reheating imprints fluctuations in the baryon-to-photon ratio. These so-called baryon isocurvature fluctuations S B survive until Big Bang Nucleosynthesis, whose yields depend nonlinearly on it. Modest S B fluctuations can therefore alleviate the current deuterium tension in parts of the PTA preferred regions and therefore strengthen their interpretation. Overabundant DWs and too strong FOPTs overproduce D/H and are ruled out.
Sources
- The NANOGrav 15-year Data Set: Evidence for a Gravitational-Wave Background
- The second data release from the European Pulsar Timing Array III. Search for gravitational wave signals
- Search for an isotropic gravitational-wave background with the Parkes Pulsar Timing Array
- Searching for the nano-Hertz stochastic gravitational wave background with the Chinese Pulsar Timing Array Data Release I
- The NANOGrav 15-year Data Set: Constraints on Supermassive Black Hole Binaries from the Gravitational Wave Background
- The second data release from the European Pulsar Timing Array: IV. Implications for massive black holes, dark matter and the early Universe
- The NANOGrav 15-year Data Set: Search for Signals from New Physics
- What is the source of the PTA GW signal?
- Primordial gravitational waves in the nano-Hertz regime and PTA data -- towards solving the GW inverse problem
- Cosmological Background Interpretation of Pulsar Timing Array Data
- A review of gravitational waves from cosmic domain walls
- Gravitational Waves from Domain Walls in Pulsar Timing Array Datasets
- Domain wall interpretation of the PTA signal confronting black hole overproduction
- Science with the space-based interferometer eLISA. II: Gravitational waves from cosmological phase transitions
- Detecting gravitational waves from cosmological phase transitions with LISA: an update
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- Searching For Gravitational Waves From Cosmological Phase Transitions With The NANOGrav 12.5-year dataset
- First-order Phase Transition interpretation of PTA signal produces solar-mass Black Holes
- Nucleosynthesis in the Presence of Primordial Isocurvature Baryon Fluctuations
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