Qiuyue Liang

The pulsar timing array systems have reported a detection of a nanohertz-band stochastic gravitational wave background in our galaxy. It is of interest to use this observation to probe modified gravity and to forecast the sensitivity with which certain deviations can be tested in the coming years. In this paper, we focus on the modified dispersion relation of the tensor modes and its effect on the overlap reduction function of the timing residual cross-correlations. We perform a comprehensive forecast of the phase velocity uncertainty, σ _v , using a Fisher analysis validated by a mock-data study to account for potential non-Gaussian behavior. We also take into account the sample variance effect and provide an observational timeline for future PTA sensitivity: detecting a 10% or -1% deviation from the speed of light at the 3 σ level requires 𝒪(30) years of observations.

Domain walls (DWs) can be produced when a discrete symmetry is spontaneously broken, and long-lived DWs can dominate the energy density of the universe. In this work, we explore the possibility that a “domain wall dominant (DWD)” phase existed in the early universe and ended with DW decay. During the DWD phase, the universe undergoes a power-law accelerated expansion of the scale factor and exhibits temporal superhorizon evolution of the relevant frequency modes. We show that this can lead to distinct features imprinted on the stochastic gravitational wave (GW) background including the independence of its amplitude from the wall tension. Our findings provide a comprehensive framework for evaluating GW emission associated with DWD, leading to distinguishable long-lived DW-induced GWs from other cosmological sources, with significant implications for future GW observatories.

We define a relativistic version of the global symmetries responsible for the restricted mobility of fracton quasiparticles. The theories have a symmetry current that is proportional to a vector field that spontaneously breaks Lorentz boost symmetry. We argue that the existence of a pressureless dust in the early Universe could be a consequence of this symmetry. We provide an example of a fractonic scalar field with a quartic self-interaction evolving on a Friedmann-Robertson-Walker background and show that the interaction gives rise to a separately conserved fluid with equation of state w = 1 .

Astrometry, the precise measurement of stellar positions and velocities, offers a promising approach to probing the low-frequency stochastic gravitational wave background (SGWB). Notably, astrometric vector sky maps are sensitive to parity-violating SGWB signals, which cannot be distinguished using pulsar timing array observations in an isotropic SGWB. We present the first astrometric constraints on parity-violating SGWB using quasar catalogs from Gaia DR3 and VLBA data. By analyzing the EB correlation in the two-point correlation function of the proper motions of the quasars, we find 2σ constraints on the parity-violating SGWB amplitude h ₇₀ ²Ω _V = -0.020 ± 0.025 from Gaia DR3 and h ₇₀ ²Ω _V = -0.004 ± 0.010 from VLBA. These constraints are valid in the frequency range 4.2 × 10^-18 Hz < f < 1.1 × 10^-8 Hz. Although not currently a tight constraint on theoretical models, this first attempt lays the groundwork for future investigations using more precise astrometric data.

We use a non-invertible symmetry to construct a three-zero texture for the down-type quark mass matrix, which can resolve the strong CP problem without invoking the axion, in four-dimensional spacetime with three quark families in QCD. We assume CP invariance at the fundamental high-energy scale.

The majoron is a well-motivated light (pseudo-Nambu-Goldstone) boson associated with the spontaneous breaking of a global lepton-number symmetry. In this Letter, we relate the spontaneous breaking scale to its soft-breaking mass by requiring that the majoron is the main component of the dark matter. An electromagnetic-anomalous coupling can be induced by minimally modifying the original majoron model, surprisingly, predicting a parameter region that largely overlaps with the QCD-axion dark matter band. Thus, we expect that axion search experiments to be able to probe majoron models.