English

Chirality oscillation of primordial gravitational waves during inflation

Cosmology and Nongalactic Astrophysics 2017-03-08 v2 General Relativity and Quantum Cosmology High Energy Physics - Theory

Abstract

We show that if the gravitational Chern-Simons term couples to a massive scalar field (m>Hm>H), the primordial gravitational waves (GWs) will show itself the chirality oscillation, i.e., the amplitudes of the left- and right-handed GWs modes will convert into each other and oscillate in their propagations. This oscillation will eventually develop a permanent difference of the amplitudes of both modes, which leads to nearly opposite oscillating shapes in the power spectra of the left- and right-handed primordial GWs. We discuss its implication to the CMB B-mode polarization.

Keywords

Cite

@article{arxiv.1608.06508,
  title  = {Chirality oscillation of primordial gravitational waves during inflation},
  author = {Yong Cai and Yu-Tong Wang and Yun-Song Piao},
  journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:1608.06508},
  year   = {2017}
}

Comments

14 pages, 11 figures; published version in JHEP; one figure added; references and comments added