CMB $\mu$ distortion from primordial gravitational waves
Abstract
We propose a new mechanism of generating the distortion in cosmic microwave background (CMB) originated from primordial gravitational waves. Such distortion is generated by the damping of the temperature anisotropies through the Thomson scattering, even on scales larger than that of Silk damping. This mechanism is in sharp contrast with that from the primordial curvature (scalar) perturbations, in which the temperature anisotropies mainly decay by Silk damping effects. We estimate the size of the distortion from the new mechanism, which can be used to constrain the amplitude of primordial gravitational waves on smaller scales independently from the CMB anisotropies, giving more wide-range constraint on their spectral index by combining the amplitude from the CMB anisotropies.
Keywords
Cite
@article{arxiv.1406.0451,
title = {CMB $\mu$ distortion from primordial gravitational waves},
author = {Atsuhisa Ota and Tomo Takahashi and Hiroyuki Tashiro and Masahide Yamaguchi},
journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:1406.0451},
year = {2015}
}
Comments
14 pages, 2 figures, prepared for submission to JCAP