Looking out for the Galileon in the nanohertz gravitational wave sky

Abstract

We study the polarizations induced by the Galileon as a stochastic gravitational wave background in the cross correlated power in a pulsar timing array. Working within Galileon gravity, we first show that the scalar gravitational wave signature of the Galileon is encoded solely in its effective mass, which is controlled by the bare mass, conformal coupling, and a tadpole. Then, we study the phenomenology of the Galileon induced scalar polarizations and place observational constraints on these using the present NANOGrav data set. Our results feature longitudinal spatial correlation, indicative of a $10^{-22}$ eV {subluminal} Galileon, and show the Galileon polarizations as a statistically compelling source of the observed spatial correlation across millisecond pulsars, if there is any.