2020/01/31 by Matteo Biagetti, Giorgio Orlando · 1 citation
Physics and Astronomy · #Amplitude #Astronomy #Astrophysics #Black Holes and Theoretical Physics #Classical mechanics #Cosmological perturbation theory #Cosmology #Cosmology and Gravitation Theories #Galaxies: Formation, Evolution, Phenomena #Galaxy #Gravitation #Gravitational wave #Inflation (cosmology) #Physics #Quantum mechanics #Spectral density #astro-ph.CO #hep-th
paper · pdf · doi:10.1088/1475-7516/2020/07/005
published as JCAP 07 (2020) 005 · 24+23 pages, 6 figures, code available at https://gitlab.com/mbiagetti/tensor_fossil, updated to published version
openalex publication_date 2020/07/02 · arxiv created 2020/07/14 · arxiv updated 2020/07/15 · openalex created_date 2020/11/23 · openalex updated_date 2026/08/05
Galaxy shapes have been observed to align with external tidal fields generated by the large-scale structures of the Universe. While the main source for these tidal fields is provided by long-wavelength density perturbations, tensor perturbations also contribute with a non-vanishing amplitude at linear order. We show that parity-breaking gravitational waves produced during inflation leave a distinctive imprint in the galaxy shape power spectrum which is not hampered by any scalar-induced tidal field. We also show that a certain class of tensor non-Gaussianities produced during inflation can leave a signature in the density-weighted galaxy shape power spectrum. We estimate the possibility of observing such imprints in future galaxy surveys.