English

Closed String Thermodynamics and a Blue Tensor Spectrum

Cosmology and Nongalactic Astrophysics 2014-10-01 v2 General Relativity and Quantum Cosmology High Energy Physics - Phenomenology High Energy Physics - Theory

Abstract

The BICEP-2 team has reported the detection of primordial cosmic microwave background B-mode polarization, with hints of a suppression of power at large angular scales relative to smaller scales. Provided that the B-mode polarization is due to primordial gravitational waves, this might imply a blue tilt of the primordial gravitational wave spectrum. Such a tilt would be incompatible with standard inflationary models, although it was predicted some years ago in the context of a mechanism that thermally generates the primordial perturbations through a Hagedorn phase of string cosmology. The purpose of this note is to encourage greater scrutiny of the data with priors informed by a model that is immediately falsifiable, but which \textit{predicts} features that might be favoured by the data-- namely a blue tensor tilt with an induced and complimentary red tilt to the scalar spectrum, with a naturally large tensor to scalar ratio that relates to both.

Keywords

Cite

@article{arxiv.1403.4927,
  title  = {Closed String Thermodynamics and a Blue Tensor Spectrum},
  author = {Robert H. Brandenberger and Ali Nayeri and Subodh P. Patil},
  journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:1403.4927},
  year   = {2014}
}

Comments

6 pages, 3 figures, references added

R2 v1 2026-06-22T03:30:14.084Z