English

Footprint of Two-Form Field: Statistical Anisotropy in Primordial Gravitational Waves

Cosmology and Nongalactic Astrophysics 2019-01-16 v2 General Relativity and Quantum Cosmology High Energy Physics - Phenomenology High Energy Physics - Theory

Abstract

We study the observational signatures of two-form field in the inflationary cosmology. In our setup a two-form field is kinetically coupled to a spectator scalar field and generates sizable gravitational waves and smaller curvature perturbation. We find that the sourced gravitational waves have a distinct signature: they are always statistically anisotropic and their spherical moments are non-zero for hexadecapole and tetrahexacontapole, while the quadrupole moment vanishes. Since their amplitude can reach O(103)\mathcal{O}(10^{-3}) in the tensor-to-scalar ratio, we expect this novel prediction will be tested in the next generation of the CMB experiments.

Keywords

Cite

@article{arxiv.1808.00548,
  title  = {Footprint of Two-Form Field: Statistical Anisotropy in Primordial Gravitational Waves},
  author = {Ippei Obata and Tomohiro Fujita},
  journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:1808.00548},
  year   = {2019}
}

Comments

19 pages, 2 figures. We apply our method developed in arXiv:1801.02778 to a new type of field