Nanohertz gravitational waves from cosmic strings and dark photon dark matter

Abstract

The recent observations by pulsar timing array (PTA) experiments suggest the existence of stochastic gravitational wave background in the nano-Hz range. It can be a hint for the new physics and cosmic string is one of the promising candidates. In this paper, we study the implication of the PTA result for cosmic strings and dark photon dark matter produced by the decay of cosmic string loops. It can simultaneously explain the PTA result and present dark matter abundance for the dark photon mass m∼10−7–10−5eV. Implications for the gravitational wave detection with multi-frequency bands are also discussed.