Phase decoherence of gravitational wave backgrounds

Metric perturbations affect the phase of gravitational waves as they propagate through the inhomogeneous universe. This effect causes stochastic gravitational wave backgrounds (SGWBs) to lose any phase coherence that may have been present at emission or horizon entry. We show that, for a standard co...

Full description

Saved in:
Bibliographic Details
Published in:Physical review. D 2020-10, Vol.102 (8), Article 083506
Main Authors: Margalit, Aoibheann, Contaldi, Carlo R., Pieroni, Mauro
Format: Article
Language:English
Subjects:
Astronomical models
Cosmology
Gravitational waves
Phase coherence
Citations: Items that this one cites
Items that cite this one
Online Access:Get full text
Tags: Add Tag
No Tags, Be the first to tag this record!
Description
Summary:Metric perturbations affect the phase of gravitational waves as they propagate through the inhomogeneous universe. This effect causes stochastic gravitational wave backgrounds (SGWBs) to lose any phase coherence that may have been present at emission or horizon entry. We show that, for a standard cosmological model, this implies complete loss of coherence above frequencies f ∼ 10−12 Hz . The result is that any attempts to map SGWBs using phase-coherent methods have no foreseeable applications. Incoherent methods that solve directly for the intensity of the SGWBs are the only methods that can reconstruct the angular dependence of any SGWB.
ISSN:2470-0010
2470-0029
DOI:10.1103/PhysRevD.102.083506