The recent gravitational wave observation by pulsar timing arrays and primordial black holes: the importance of non-gaussianities

Abstract

We study whether the signal seen by pulsar timing arrays (PTAs) may originate from gravitational waves (GWs) induced by large primordial perturbations. Such perturbations may be accompanied by a sizeable primordial black hole (PBH) abundance. We improve existing analyses and show that PBH overproduction disfavors Gaussian scenarios for scalar-induced GWs at 2{\sigma} and single-field inflationary scenarios, accounting for non-Gaussianity, at 3{\sigma} as the explanation of the most constraining NANOGrav 15-year data. This tension can be relaxed in models where non-Gaussianites suppress the PBH abundance. On the flip side, the PTA data does not constrain the abundance of PBHs.

Comments: V3: Version published on PRL. 15 pages and 8 figures. Full article + supplementary materials. V1 appeared on Thu, 29 Jun 2023