2012/09/19 by Daniel Carney, Willy Fischler, Ely D. Kovetz +2 · 2 citations
Physics and Astronomy · #Black Holes and Theoretical Physics #Cosmology and Gravitation Theories #Einstein tensor #Field (mathematics) #Galaxies: Formation, Evolution, Phenomena #Scalar (mathematics) #Scalar field #Spectral density #Spectrum (functional analysis) #Tensor (intrinsic definition) #Tensor density #Tensor field #astro-ph.CO #gr-qc #hep-th
paper · pdf · doi:10.1007/jhep11(2012)042
published as JHEP 1211 (2012) 042
arxiv created 2012/09/19 · openalex publication_date 2012/11/01 · arxiv updated 2014/12/17 · openalex created_date 2016/06/24 · openalex updated_date 2026/08/05
We consider the effects of fields with suddenly changing mass on the inflationary power spectra. In this context, when a field becomes light, it will be excited. This process contributes to the tensor power spectrum. We compute these effects in a gauge-invariant manner, where we use a novel analytical method for evaluating the corrections to the tensor spectrum due to these excitations. In the case of a scalar field, we show that the net impact on the tensors is small as long as the perturbative expansion is valid. Thus, in these scenarios, measurement of tensor modes is still in one-to-one correspondence with the Hubble scale.