2001/01/31 by Roy Maartens, Christos G. Tsagas, Christos Tsagas +1
Earth and Planetary Sciences · Physics and Astronomy · #Astrophysics #Classical mechanics #Computational physics #Cosmology and Gravitation Theories #Curvature #Field (mathematics) #Geometry #Geophysics and Gravity Measurements #Gravitational field #Gravitational redshift #Gravitational wave #Isotropy #Magnetic field #Physics #Pulsars and Gravitational Waves Research #Quantum electrodynamics #Quantum mechanics #Tensor (intrinsic definition) #astro-ph #gr-qc
paper · pdf · doi:10.1103/physrevd.63.123507
published as Phys.Rev. D63 (2001) 123507 · Minor changes. To appear in Phys. Rev. D
openalex publication_date 2001/05/14 · arxiv created 2001/05/19 · arxiv updated 2009/11/30 · openalex created_date 2025/10/10 · openalex updated_date 2026/08/05
We investigate the influence of cosmic magnetic fields on gravitational wave perturbations and find exact solutions on large scales. We show that a large-scale magnetic field can generate large-scale non-decaying gravitational waves. In the general case where gravitational waves are generated by other mechanisms, a large-scale magnetic field introduces a new decaying tensor mode and modifies the non-decaying mode. The direct effect of the magnetic field is to damp the gravitational waves, while an indirect magneto-curvature effect can either damp or boost the waves. A magnetic field also leads to a breaking of statistical isotropy, and the magnetic imprint on the tensor spectrum in principle provides a means of detecting a primordial field.