Gravitational waves induced by matter isocurvature in general cosmologies
Abstract
The expansion history and content of the Universe between the end of inflation and the onset of Big Bang Nucleosynthesis is mostly unknown. In this paper, we study gravitational waves (GWs) induced by matter isocurvature fluctuations in a generic perfect fluid background as a novel probe of the physics of the very early Universe. We analytically compute the induced GW kernel and analyze the spectral GW energy density for a sharply peaked isocurvature power spectrum. We show that the spectral shape of the GW signal is sensitive to the equation of state parameter of the perfect fluid dominating the early Universe after inflation. We find that the GW amplitude is enhanced for a soft equation of state. Our framework can be applied to dark matter isocurvature and models leading to early matter-dominated eras, such as primordial black holes and cosmological solitons.
Cite
@article{arxiv.2509.02122,
title = {Gravitational waves induced by matter isocurvature in general cosmologies},
author = {Guillem Domènech and Jan Tränkle},
journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:2509.02122},
year = {2025}
}
Comments
18 pages + appendices, 6 figures; v2: matches published version