2006/06/01 by Alexander Vikman, Vikman, Alexander · 2 citations
Physics and Astronomy · #Astrophysics (astro-ph) #Black Holes and Theoretical Physics #Cosmology and Gravitation Theories #FOS: Physical sciences #Galaxies: Formation, Evolution, Phenomena #astro-ph
paper · pdf · doi:10.48550/arxiv.astro-ph/0606033
Contributed to XLIst Rencontres de Moriond Workshop on Contents and Structures of the Universe, La Thuile, Italy, March 18-25, 2006
arxiv created 2006/06/01 · openalex publication_date 2006/06/01 · arxiv updated 2009/12/01 · openalex created_date 2025/10/10 · openalex updated_date 2026/07/28
It is well known that in manifestly Lorentz invariant theories with nontrivial kinetic terms, perturbations around some classical backgrounds can travel faster than light. These exotic "supersonic" models may have interesting consequences for cosmology and astrophysics. In particular, one can show that in such theories the contribution of the gravitational waves to the CMB fluctuations can be significantly larger than that in standard inflationary models. This increase of the tensor-to-scalar perturbation ratio leads to a larger B-component of the CMB polarization, thus making the prospects for future detection much more promising. Interestingly, the spectral index of scalar perturbations and mass of the scalar field considered in the model are practically indistinguishable from the standard case. Whereas the energy scale of inflation and hence the reheating temperature can be much higher compared to a simple chaotic inflation.