Generalized early dark energy and its cosmological consequences

We investigate cosmological consequences of a generalized early dark energy (EDE) model where a scalar field behaves as dark energy at various cosmological epochs for a broad range of parameters such as the energy scale and the initial field value. We consider power-law and axion-type potentials for such an EDE field and study how it affects the cosmological evolution. We show that gravitational wave background can be significantly enhanced to be detected in future observations such as LISA and DECIGO in some parameter space. Implications of the EDE model are also discussed for a scenario where a blue-tilted inflationary tensor power spectrum can explain the recent NANOGrav 15-year signal. We argue that the bounds on the reheating temperature can be relaxed compared to the case of the standard thermal history.