Bounds on Gravitational Wave Production from Unitarity in an Early NEC-Violating Model
High Energy Physics - Theory
2026-01-21 v1 General Relativity and Quantum Cosmology
Abstract
We study a cosmological scenario featuring an early phase of null energy condition (NEC) violation. Within this framework, we show that perturbative unitarity bounds place strong constraints on both the amplitude and the spectral tilt of primordial gravitational waves. Our analysis is largely insensitive to the detailed realization of the transition between the NEC-violating phase and subsequent cosmological phases, allowing our results to be extended to a broader class of models. Finally, the perturbative unitarity approach employed here is applicable to a wide range of cosmological scenarios.
Keywords
Cite
@article{arxiv.2601.14008,
title = {Bounds on Gravitational Wave Production from Unitarity in an Early NEC-Violating Model},
author = {Pavel Petrov and Jianing Wang},
journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:2601.14008},
year = {2026}
}
Comments
33 pages, 5 figures