Pulsar Polarization Arrays.

Abstract

Pulsar timing arrays (PTAs) consisting of widely distributed and well-timed millisecond pulsars can serve as a galactic interferometer to measure gravitational waves. With the same data acquired for PTAs, we propose to develop pulsar polarization arrays (PPAs), to explore astrophysics and fundamental physics. As in the case of PTAs, PPAs are best suited to reveal temporal and spatial correlations at large scales that are hard to mimic by local noise. To demonstrate the physical potential of PPAs, we consider detection of ultralight axionlike dark matter (ALDM), through cosmic birefringence induced by its Chern-Simons coupling. Because of its tiny mass, the ultralight ALDM can be generated as a Bose-Einstein condensate, characterized by a strong wave nature. Incorporating both temporal and spatial correlations of the signal, we show that PPAs have a potential to probe the Chern-Simons coupling up to ∼10^{-14}-10^{-17} GeV^{-1}, with a mass range ∼10^{-27}-10^{-21} eV.