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arXiv · 2409.13692

No Pulsar Timing Noise from Brownian Motion of the Sun

James M. Cline
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Abstract

It was recently claimed (arXiv:2405.05410 [gr-qc]) 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.

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James M. Cline. 2024-09-21. No Pulsar Timing Noise from Brownian Motion of the Sun. https://arxiv.org/abs/2409.13692

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