Cosmic microwave background fluctuations from gravitational waves: An analytic approach

2004/12/21 by Jonathan R. Pritchard, Marc Kamionkowski · 5 citations
Physics and Astronomy · #Amplitude #Anisotropy #Astrophysics #Black Holes and Theoretical Physics #Computational physics #Cosmic background radiation #Cosmic microwave background #Cosmology and Gravitation Theories #Gravitational wave #Neutrino #Physics #Pulsars and Gravitational Waves Research #Quantum mechanics #Spectral line #WKB approximation #astro-ph

paper · pdf · doi:10.1016/j.aop.2005.03.005

published as Annals Phys. 318 (2005) 2-36 · 38 pages, 15 figures, submitted to Annals of Physics

arxiv created 2004/12/21 · openalex publication_date 2005/05/06 · arxiv updated 2009/12/01 · openalex created_date 2025/10/10 · openalex updated_date 2026/08/05

Abstract

We develop an analytic approach to calculation of the temperature and polarisation power spectra of the cosmic microwave background due to inflationary gravitational waves. This approach complements the more precise numerical results by providing insight into the physical origins of the features in the power spectra. We explore the use of analytic approximations for the gravitational-wave evolution, making use of the WKB approach to handle the radiation-matter transition. In the process, we describe scaling relations for the temperature and polarisation power spectra. We illustrate the dependence of the amplitude, shape, and peak locations on the details of recombination, the gravitational-wave power spectrum, and the cosmological parameters, and explain the origin of the peak locations in the temperature and polarisation power spectra. The decline in power on small scales in the polarisation power spectra is discussed in terms of phase-damping. In an appendix we detail numerical techniques for integrating the gravitational-wave evolution in the presence of anisotropic stress from free-streaming neutrinos.

Citations

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Cited by

• Tensor microwave background fluctuations for large multipole order
• Probing polarization states of primordial gravitational waves with cosmic microwave background anisotropies
• f(R) gravity inflation with string-corrected axion dark matter
• Detecting relic gravitational waves in the CMB: Comparison of different methods
• Parity violation in the CMB bispectrum by a rolling pseudoscalar