Implications of NANOGrav results and UV freeze-in in a fast-expanding Universe

Abstract

Recent pulsar timing data reported by the NANOGrav collaboration indicates the existence of a stochastic gravitational wave (GW) background at a frequency $f\sim 10^{-8}~\rm Hz$. We show that a dark sector consisting of a Standard Model (SM) gauge singlet fermion $\chi$ and a singlet scalar $\phi$, both charged under a $Z_4$ symmetry, is capable of generating such a low frequency GW via strong first order phase transition (SFOPT) through the modification of the standard cosmological history, where we assume faster-than-usual expansion at pre-BBN times driven by a new cosmological species $\varphi$ whose energy density red-shifts with the scale factor as $\rho_\varphi\propto a^{-\left(4+n\right)}$. Depending on the choice of the fast expansion parameters, reheat temperature and effective scale of the theory, it is also possible to address correct dark matter (DM) relic abundance via freeze-in. We show that a successful first order phase transition explaining NANOGrav results together with PLANCK observed DM abundance put bound on the fast expansion parameters requiring $n\lesssim 4$ to explain both.