2024/08/30 by Theodoros Papanikolaou, Papanikolaou, Theodoros, Charalampos Tzerefos +5 · 5 citations
Earth and Planetary Sciences · Physics and Astronomy · #Atomic and Subatomic Physics Research #Cosmology and Nongalactic Astrophysics (astro-ph.CO) #FOS: Physical sciences #General Relativity and Quantum Cosmology (gr-qc) #Geophysics and Gravity Measurements #High Energy Physics - Theory (hep-th) #Pulsars and Gravitational Waves Research
paper · pdf · doi:10.48550/arxiv.2408.17259
openalex publication_date 2024/08/30 · openalex created_date 2025/10/10 · openalex updated_date 2026/07/28
Gravitational waves (GWs) can undoubtedly serve as a messenger from the early Universe acting as well as a novel probe of the underlying gravity theory. In this work, motivated by one-loop vacuum-polarization effects on curved spacetime, we investigate a gravitational theory with non-minimal curvature-electromagnetic coupling terms of the form ξR FμνFμν, where R is the scalar curvature and Fμν the Faraday tensor, which can be responsible for the generation of primordial electromagnetic fields. We study then the GW signatures of such coupling terms deriving in particular for the first time to the best of our knowledge the modified tensor modes equation of motion. Remarkably, we find a universal infrared (IR) frequency scaling f5 of the electromagnetically induced GW (EMIGW) signal, which, depending on the energy scale of inflation, the duration of inflation and reheating as well as the dynamical behaviour of the gauge coupling function ξ, can be well within the detection sensitivity bands of GW experiments such as SKA, LISA, ET and BBO, being thus potentially detectable in the future by GW observatories.