English

Generating enhanced parity-violating gravitational waves during inflation with violation of the null energy condition

General Relativity and Quantum Cosmology 2023-03-14 v2 Cosmology and Nongalactic Astrophysics High Energy Physics - Theory

Abstract

A violation of the null energy condition (NEC) during inflation in a single-field inflation model will naturally enhance the amplitude of the parity violation effect (defined by Δχ\Delta\chi) of inflationary primordial gravitational waves (GWs), provided the inflaton is non-minimally coupled to a gravitational Chern-Simons term. After going through the NEC-violating phase, the Universe enters subsequent slow-roll inflation with a higher energy scale (i.e., a greater Hubble parameter HH), which results in an enhanced nearly scale-invariant power spectrum (i.e., PTP_{\rm T}) of inflationary primordial GWs in the high-frequency band, while PTP_{\rm T} remains consistent with observations in the frequency band of the cosmic microwave background. Therefore, the violation of NEC during inflation will amplify the observability (i.e., PTΔχP_{\rm T}\cdot\Delta\chi) of the parity violation effect on small scales. Intriguingly, our model has particular oscillatory features on Δχ\Delta\chi that may not be mimicked by others.

Keywords

Cite

@article{arxiv.2212.10893,
  title  = {Generating enhanced parity-violating gravitational waves during inflation with violation of the null energy condition},
  author = {Yong Cai},
  journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:2212.10893},
  year   = {2023}
}

Comments

24 pages, 16 figures; new references added, updated to match the published version