Finite velocity effect of ultralight vector dark matter in pulsar timing arrays

Abstract: Pulsar timing array (PTA) collaborations have recently reported evidence of stochastic gravitational waves. Besides gravitational wave signals from cosmological or astrophysical origins, PTAs are also capable of detecting coherently oscillating ultralight dark matter in our galaxy. This paper investigates pulsar timing influenced by ultralight vector dark matter, based on the pure gravitational effect of the vector field. We extensively consider the finite dark matter velocity $v$ for ultralight vector dark matter in PTAs, rather than the limit $v\rightarrow0$ in previous studies. It is found that the leading-order shift in pulsar timing turns out to be proportional to negative slope of $v$. Consequently, one can not distinguish between ultralight vector dark matter and ultralight scalar dark matter with the timing residual amplitude. Assuming the existence of stochastic vector dark matter in our galaxy, the corresponding angular correlation curve in PTAs is found to be similar to that of scalar dark matter. We find that it can be distinguishable, only when the pulsar pairs are distant from the earth.