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Register a new userOscillations in the stochastic gravitational wave background from sharp features and particle production during inflation
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We identify a characteristic pattern in the scalar-induced stochastic gravitational wave background from particle production during inflation. If particle production is sufficiently efficient, the scalar power spectrum exhibits $mathcal{O}(1)$ oscillations periodic in $k$, characteristic of a sharp feature, with an exponentially enhanced envelope. We systematically study the properties of the induced spectrum of gravitational waves sourced after inflation and find that this inherits the periodic structure in $k$, resulting in a peak in the gravitational wave energy density spectrum with $mathcal{O}(10 %)$ modulations. The frequency of the oscillation in the scalar power spectrum is determined by the scale of the feature during inflation and in turn sets the frequency of modulations in the gravitational wave signal. We present an explicit realisation of this phenomenon in the framework of multifield inflation, in the form of a strong sharp turn in the inflationary trajectory. The resulting stochastic background is potentially detectable in future gravitational wave observatories, and considerations of backreaction and perturbativity can be used to constrain the parameter space from the theoretical side. Our work motivates more extensive research linking primordial features to observable properties of the stochastic background of gravitational waves, and dedicated development in data analysis for their detection.
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We analyse the post-inflationary contribution to the stochastic gravitational wave background due to a resonant feature in the scalar power spectrum, which is characterised by an oscillation in $log(k)$, complementing our previous work arXiv:2012.02761 on sharp features. Primordial features signal departures of inflation from the single-field slow-roll paradigm and are motivated by embeddings of inflation in high energy physics. We find that the oscillation in the scalar power spectrum leads to a corresponding modulation in the gravitational wave spectrum that can be understood as a superposition of two oscillatory pieces, one with the original frequency of the scalar oscillations, and one with double frequency. For oscillations with slowly-varying amplitude this oscillatory part can be computed semi-analytically. Our results can be used as templates for the reconstruction of the signal from future data and permit extracting information about the small scale scalar power spectrum from measurements of the stochastic gravitational wave background.
We calculate the curvature power spectrum sourced by spectator fields that are excited repeatedly and non-adiabatically during inflation. In the absence of detailed information of the nature of spectator field interactions, we consider an ensemble of models with intervals between the repeated interactions and interaction strengths drawn from simple probabilistic distributions. We show that the curvature power spectra of each member of the ensemble shows rich structure with many features, and there is a large variability between different realizations of the same ensemble. Such features can be probed by the cosmic microwave background (CMB) and large scale structure observations. They can also have implications for primordial black hole formation and CMB spectral distortions. The geometric random walk behavior of the spectator field allows us to calculate the ensemble-averaged power spectrum of curvature perturbations semi-analytically. For sufficiently large stochastic sourcing, the ensemble-averaged power spectrum shows a scale dependence arising from the time spent by modes outside the horizon during the period of particle production, in spite of there being no preferred scale in the underlying model. We find that the magnitude of the ensemble-averaged power spectrum overestimates the typical power spectra in the ensemble because the ensemble distribution of the power spectra is highly non-Gaussian with fat tails.
We present analytic results for the gravitational wave power spectrum induced in models where the inflaton is coupled to a fermionic pseudocurrent. We show that although such a coupling creates helically polarized fermions, the polarized component of the resulting gravitational waves is parametrically suppressed with respect to the non-polarized one. We also show that the amplitude of the gravitational wave signal associated to this production cannot exceed that generated by the standard mechanism of amplification of vacuum fluctuations. We previously found that this model allows for a regime in which the backreaction of the produced fermions allows for slow-roll inflation even for a steep inflaton potential, and still leads to Gaussian primordial scalar perturbations. The present analysis shows that this regime also results in a gravitational wave signal compatible with the current bounds.
We explore non-adiabatic particle production in a de Sitter universe for a scalar spectator field, by allowing the effective mass $m^2(t)$ of this field and the cosmic time interval between non-adiabatic events to vary stochastically. Two main scenarios are considered depending on the (non-stochastic) mass $M$ of the spectator field: the conformal case with $M^2=2H^2$, and the case of a massless field. We make use of the transfer matrix formalism to parametrize the evolution of the system in terms of the occupation number, and two phases associated with the transfer matrix; these are used to construct the evolution of the spectator field. Assuming short-time interactions approximated by Dirac-delta functions, we numerically track the change of these parameters and the field in all regimes: sub- and super-horizon with weak and strong scattering. In all cases a log-normally distributed field amplitude is observed, and the logarithm of the field amplitude approximately satisfies the properties of a Wiener process outside the horizon. We derive a Fokker-Planck equation for the evolution of the transfer matrix parameters, which allows us to calculate analytically non-trivial distributions and moments in the weak-scattering limit.
A gravitational wave stochastic background of astrophysical origin may have resulted from the superposition of a large number of unresolved sources since the beginning of stellar activity. Its detection would put very strong constrains on the physical properties of compact objects, the initial mass function or the star formation history. On the other hand, it could be a noise that would mask the stochastic background of cosmological origin. We review the main astrophysical processes able to produce a stochastic background and discuss how it may differ from the primordial contribution by its statistical properties. Current detection methods are also presented.
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