2011/09/30 by Jessica L. Cook, Lorenzo Sorbo · 3 citations
Physics and Astronomy · #astro-ph.CO #gr-qc #hep-ph #hep-th
paper · pdf · doi:10.1103/physrevd.85.023534
published as J. L.Cook, L. Sorbo, "Particle production during inflation and gravitational waves detectable by ground-based interferometers," Phys. Rev. D85, 023534 (2012) · 13 pages, 2 figures, significant changes in section 3, main conclusions unaffected
arxiv created 2012/06/27 · arxiv updated 2012/06/28
Inflation typically predicts a quasi scale-invariant spectrum of gravitational waves. In models of slow-roll inflation, the amplitude of such a background is too small to allow direct detection without a dedicated space-based experiment such as the proposed BBO or DECIGO. In this paper we note that particle production during inflation can generate a feature in the spectrum of primordial gravitational waves. We discuss the possibility that such a feature might be detected by ground-based laser interferometers such as Advanced LIGO and Advanced Virgo, which will become operational in the next few years. We also discuss the prospects of detection by a space interferometer like LISA. We first study gravitational waves induced by nonperturbative, explosive particle production during inflation: while explosive production of scalar quanta does not generate a significant bump in the primordial tensor spectrum, production of vectors can. We also show that chiral gravitational waves produced by electromagnetic fields amplified by an axion-like inflaton could be detectable by Advanced LIGO.