English

Limits on the gravity wave contribution to microwave anisotropies

Astrophysics 2009-08-18 v2

Abstract

We present limits on the fraction of large angle microwave anisotropies which could come from tensor perturbations. We use the COBE results as well as smaller scale CMB observations, measurements of galaxy correlations, abundances of galaxy clusters, and Lyman alpha absorption cloud statistics. Our aim is to provide conservative limits on the tensor-to-scalar ratio for standard inflationary models. For power-law inflation, for example, we find T/S<0.52 at 95% confidence, with a similar constraint for phi^p potentials. However, for models with tensor amplitude unrelated to the scalar spectral index it is still currently possible to have T/S>1.

Keywords

Cite

@article{arxiv.astro-ph/9901028,
  title  = {Limits on the gravity wave contribution to microwave anisotropies},
  author = {J. P. Zibin and Douglas Scott and Martin White},
  journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:astro-ph/9901028},
  year   = {2009}
}

Comments

23 pages, 7 figures, accepted for publication in Phys. Rev. D. Calculations extended to blue spectral index, Fig. 6 added, discussion of results expanded

R2 v1 2026-07-22T09:45:13.816Z