Interferometer constraints on the inflationary field content

With an energy scale that can be as high as 1014GeV, inflation may provide a unique probe of high-energy physics. Both scalar and tensor fluctuations generated during this early accelerated expansion contain crucial information about the particle content of the primordial universe. The advent of gro...

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Bibliographic Details
Published in:Journal of cosmology and astroparticle physics 2020-03, Vol.2020 (3), p.31-31
Main Authors: Iacconi, Laura, Fasiello, Matteo, Assadullahi, Hooshyar, Dimastrogiovanni, Emanuela, Wands, David
Format: Article
Language:English
Subjects:
Couplings
Gravitational waves
Gravity waves
Helicity
Interferometers
Physics
Tensors
Time dependence
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Summary:With an energy scale that can be as high as 1014GeV, inflation may provide a unique probe of high-energy physics. Both scalar and tensor fluctuations generated during this early accelerated expansion contain crucial information about the particle content of the primordial universe. The advent of ground- and space-based interferometers enables us to probe primordial physics at length-scales much smaller than current CMB constraints. One key prediction of single-field slow-roll inflation is a red-tilted gravitational wave spectrum, currently inaccessible at interferometer scales. Interferometers probe directly inflationary physics that deviates from the minimal scenario and in particular additional particle content with sizeable couplings to the inflaton field. We adopt here an effective description for such fields and focus on the case of extra spin-2 fields. We find that time-dependent sound speeds for the helicity-2 modes can generate primordial gravitational waves with a blue-tilted spectrum, potentially detectable at interferometer scales.
ISSN:1475-7516
1475-7516
DOI:10.1088/1475-7516/2020/03/031