New sources of gravitational waves during inflation

Journal Article · Fri Aug 01 00:00:00 EDT 2014 · Journal of Cosmology and Astroparticle Physics

DOI:https://doi.org/10.1088/1475-7516/2014/08/016· OSTI ID:22373410

Senatore, Leonardo; Silverstein, Eva ^[1]; Zaldarriaga, Matias ^[2]

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1. Department of Physics and SLAC, Stanford University, Stanford, CA 94305 (United States)
2. Institute for Advanced Study, Einstein Drive, Princeton, NJ 08540 (United States)

We point out that detectable inflationary tensor modes can be generated by particle or string sources produced during inflation, consistently with the requirements for inflation and constraints from scalar fluctuations. We show via examples that this effect can dominate over the contribution from quantum fluctuations of the metric, occurring even when the inflationary potential energy is too low to produce a comparable signal. Thus a detection of tensor modes from inflation does not automatically constitute a determination of the inflationary Hubble scale.

• OSTI ID: 22373410
• Journal Information: Journal of Cosmology and Astroparticle Physics, Vol. 2014, Issue 08; Other Information: Country of input: International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA); ISSN 1475-7516
• Country of Publication: United States
• Language: English

Related Subjects

79 ASTROPHYSICS
COSMOLOGY AND ASTRONOMY
COMPARATIVE EVALUATIONS
COSMOLOGICAL INFLATION
FLUCTUATIONS
GRAVITATIONAL WAVES
METRICS
POTENTIAL ENERGY
SIGNALS
TENSORS