Direct detection of the inflationary gravitational-wave background

By Tristan L. Smith, M. Kamionkowski, A. Cooray. 2005

150 citations recorded by the source corpus.

Inflation generically predicts a stochastic background of gravitational waves over a broad range of frequencies, from those accessible with cosmic microwave background (CMB) measurements, to those accessible directly with gravitational-wave detectors, like NASA's Big-Bang Observer (BBO) or Japan's Deci-Hertz Interferometer Gravitational-wave Observer (DECIGO), both currently under study. Here we investigate the detectability of the inflationary gravitational-wave background at BBO/DECIGO frequencies. To do so, we survey a range of slow-roll inflationary models consistent with constraints from the CMB and large-scale structure (LSS). We go beyond the usual assumption of power-law power spectra, which may break down given the 16 orders of magnitude in frequency between the CMB and direct detection, and solve instead the inflationary dynamics for four classes of inflaton potentials. Direct detection is possible in a variety of inflationary models, although probably not in any in which the gravitational-wave signal does not appear in the CMB polarization. However, direct detection by BBO/DECIGO can help discriminate between inflationary models that have the same slow-roll parameters at CMB/LSS scales.

Subfields: Astronomy and Astrophysics, Nuclear and High Energy Physics

View Paper: https://www.semanticscholar.org/paper/c914a4816c011132ad7b24673711186df838976d

How researchers see this paper

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In Astronomy and Astrophysics

1. D. Baumann
2. M. Pieroni
3. V. Domcke
4. P. Bin'etruy
5. J. Cook
6. L. Sorbo
7. Keitaro Takahashi
8. K. Ichiki

In Nuclear and High Energy Physics

1. M. Pieroni
2. V. Domcke
3. P. Bin'etruy
4. J. Cook
5. D. Baumann
6. Keitaro Takahashi
7. K. Ichiki
8. L. Sorbo

Citations in the corpus

• Primordial gravitational waves for universality classes of pseudoscalar inflation (2016, background): “[25], the update from EPTA [26] and the expected sensitivity of SKA [27].”
• Particle production during inflation and gravitational waves detectable by ground-based interferometers (2011, background): “62 depending on the details of reheating [8]), we have μ = 6πPζ N 2 C M P , (46)”
• Gravitational Wave Spectrum Induced by Primordial Scalar Perturbations (2007, methodology): “2 For the first-order inflationary tensor spectrum this approach was followed by [23].”