Detecting relic gravitational waves in the CMB: Optimal parameters and their constraints

2009/02/28 by Wen Zhao, W. Zhao, D. Baskaran · 1 citation
Mathematics · Physics and Astronomy · #Advanced Differential Geometry Research #Astrophysics #Black Holes and Theoretical Physics #CMB cold spot #COSMIC cancer database #Computational physics #Cosmic background radiation #Cosmic microwave background #Cosmology #Cosmology and Gravitation Theories #Geometry #Gravitational wave #Mathematics #Multipole expansion #Optics #Physics #Planck #Quantum mechanics #Scalar (mathematics) #Tensor (intrinsic definition) #astro-ph.CO #gr-qc #hep-ph #hep-th

paper · pdf · doi:10.1103/physrevd.79.083003

published as Phys.Rev.D79:083003,2009 · 32 pages, 5 figures, Phys.Rev.D accepted

arxiv created 2009/03/27 · openalex publication_date 2009/04/09 · arxiv updated 2009/12/01 · openalex created_date 2025/10/10 · openalex updated_date 2026/08/05

Abstract

The prospect of detecting relic gravitational waves, through their imprint in the cosmic microwave background radiation, provides an excellent opportunity to study the very early Universe. In the simplest viable theoretical models the relic gravitational wave background is characterized by two parameters, the tensor-to-scalar ratio r and the tensor spectral index n_t. In this paper, we analyze the potential joint constraints on these two parameters, r and n_t, using the data from the upcoming cosmic microwave background radiation experiments. Introducing the notion of the best-pivot multipole \ensuremathℓ_t^*, we find that at this pivot multipole the parameters r and n_t are uncorrelated, and have the smallest variances. We derive the analytical formulas for the best-pivot multipole number \ensuremathℓ_t^*, and the variances of the parameters r and n_t. We verify these analytical calculations using numerical simulation methods, and find agreement to within 20%. The analytical results provide a simple way to estimate the detection ability for the relic gravitational waves by the future observations of the cosmic microwave background radiation.

Citations

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• Probing the primordial universe with gravitational waves detectors