Maximal amount of gravitational waves in the curvaton scenario
- Department of Physics and INFN Sezione di Padova, via Marzolo 8, I-35131 Padova (Italy)
- Departement de Physique Theorique, Universite de Geneve 4, 24 Quai Ansermet, Geneva 1211 (Switzerland)
The curvaton scenario for the generation of the cosmological curvature perturbation on large scales represents an alternative to the standard slow-roll scenario of inflation in which the observed density perturbations are due to fluctuations of the inflaton field itself. Its basic assumption is that the initial curvature perturbation due to the inflaton field is negligible. This is attained by lowering the energy scale of inflation, thereby highly suppressing the amount of gravitational waves produced during inflation. We compute the power spectrum of the gravitational waves generated at second order in perturbation theory by the curvaton (isocurvature) perturbations between the end of inflation and the curvaton decay. An interesting property of this contribution to the tensor perturbations is that it is directly proportional to the amount of non-Gaussianity predicted within the curvaton scenario. We show that the spectrum of gravitational waves may be in the range of future gravitational wave detectors.
- OSTI ID:
- 21027732
- Journal Information:
- Physical Review. D, Particles Fields, Journal Name: Physical Review. D, Particles Fields Journal Issue: 6 Vol. 76; ISSN PRVDAQ; ISSN 0556-2821
- Country of Publication:
- United States
- Language:
- English
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