Cosmic gravitational-wave background in a cyclic universe

2003/07/18 by Latham A. Boyle, Paul J. Steinhardt, Neil Turok · 3 citations
Physics and Astronomy · #Black Holes and Theoretical Physics #Cosmology and Gravitation Theories #Pulsars and Gravitational Waves Research #astro-ph #hep-ph #hep-th

paper · pdf · doi:10.1103/physrevd.69.127302

published as Phys.Rev.D69:127302,2004 · 4 pages, 3 figuers

arxiv created 2003/07/18 · openalex publication_date 2004/06/30 · arxiv updated 2009/12/01 · openalex created_date 2025/10/10 · openalex updated_date 2026/07/28

Abstract

Inflation predicts a primordial gravitational wave spectrum that is slightly ``red.'' In this Brief Report, we compute both the amplitude and spectral form of the primordial tensor spectrum predicted by cyclic or ekpyrotic models under the assumption that perturbations pass smoothly through the bounce. The spectrum is exponentially suppressed compared to inflation on long wavelengths. The strongest constraint is that the energy density in gravitational waves is less than 10% of the critical density at nucleosynthesis.

Citations

• A new inflationary universe scenario: A possible solution of the horizon, flatness, homogeneity, isotropy and primordial monopole problems
• Cosmological perturbations in a big-crunch–big-bang space-time
• Ekpyrotic universe: Colliding branes and the origin of the hot big bang
• On the “Causality Argument” in Bouncing Cosmologies

Cited by

• Generating scale-invariant perturbations from rapidly-evolving equation of state
• The large-scale structure of the Universe
• Planck2015 results