2016/07/31 by Stefan Antusch, Francesco Cefala, Francesco Cefalà +1 · 2 citations
Earth and Planetary Sciences · Physics and Astronomy · #Amplitude #Classical mechanics #Cosmology and Gravitation Theories #Geophysics and Gravity Measurements #Gravitation #Gravitational wave #Gravitational wave background #Inflation (cosmology) #Inflaton #Physics #Pulsars and Gravitational Waves Research #Quantum electrodynamics #Quantum mechanics #Scalar (mathematics) #Scalar field #Theoretical physics #astro-ph.CO #gr-qc #hep-ph #hep-th
paper · pdf · doi:10.1103/physrevlett.118.011303
published as Phys. Rev. Lett. 118, 011303 (2017) · 5 pages, 3 figures; v2: version published in PRL; v3: includes Erratum (submitted to PRL)
openalex publication_date 2017/01/06 · arxiv created 2018/04/12 · arxiv updated 2018/04/13 · openalex created_date 2025/10/10 · openalex updated_date 2026/08/05
We investigate the production of gravitational waves during preheating after inflation in the common case of field potentials that are asymmetric around the minimum. In particular, we study the impact of oscillons, comparatively long lived and spatially localized regions where a scalar field (e.g., the inflaton) oscillates with large amplitude. Contrary to a previous study, which considered a symmetric potential, we find that oscillons in asymmetric potentials associated with a phase transition can generate a pronounced peak in the spectrum of gravitational waves that largely exceeds the linear preheating spectrum. We discuss the possible implications of this enhanced amplitude of gravitational waves. For instance, for low scale inflation models, the contribution from the oscillons can strongly enhance the observation prospects at current and future gravitational wave detectors.