Imprint of gravitational waves on the cosmic microwave background

Journal Article · Mon Jul 19 00:00:00 EDT 1993 · Physical Review Letters; (United States)

DOI:https://doi.org/10.1103/PhysRevLett.71.324· OSTI ID:6280563

Crittenden, R; Bond, J R; Davis, R L; Efstathiou, G; Steinhardt, P J ^[1]

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1. Department of Physics, University of Pennsylvania, Philadelphia, Pennsylvania 19104 (United States) Canadian Institute for Theoretical Astrophysics, University of Toronto, Toronto, Ontario, M5S 1A7 (Canada) Department of Astrophysics, Oxford University, Oxford, England OX1 3RH ( )

Long-wavelength gravitational waves can induce significant temperature anisotropy in the cosmic microwave background. Distinguishing this from anisotropy induced by energy density fluctuations is critical for testing inflationary cosmology and theories of large-scale structure formation. We describe full radiative transport calculations of the two contributions and show that they differ dramatically at angular scales below a few degrees. We show how anisotropy experiments probing large- and small-angular scales can combine to distinguish the imprint due to gravitational waves.

• OSTI ID: 6280563
• Journal Information: Physical Review Letters; (United States), Vol. 71:3; ISSN 0031-9007
• Country of Publication: United States
• Language: English

Related Subjects

71 CLASSICAL AND QUANTUM MECHANICS
GENERAL PHYSICS
GRAVITATIONAL WAVES
BACKGROUND RADIATION
MICROWAVE RADIATION
ANISOTROPY
ENERGY DENSITY
FLUCTUATIONS
INFLATIONARY UNIVERSE
COSMOLOGICAL MODELS
ELECTROMAGNETIC RADIATION
MATHEMATICAL MODELS
RADIATIONS
VARIATIONS
661310* - Relativity & Gravitation- (1992-)