English

Scalar-induced gravitational waves from a box-shaped curvature power spectrum

General Relativity and Quantum Cosmology 2026-07-12 v1 Cosmology and Nongalactic Astrophysics

Abstract

We compute the stochastic background of gravitational waves (GWs) produced at second order in cosmological perturbation theory by a primordial curvature power spectrum that is flat in lnk\ln k over a finite band [k,k+]=[keΔ,ke+Δ][k_-,k_+]=[k_*e^{-\Delta},k_*e^{+\Delta}] and vanishes elsewhere. This logarithmic box interpolates between a monochromatic spectrum as Δ0\Delta\to0 and a locally scale-invariant plateau as Δ\Delta\to\infty, and its sharp boundaries make the geometry of the source convolution unusually transparent. Working in the radiation era, we reduce the convolution to a compact integral over the overlap between the momentum triangle and the box, and evaluate it analytically in two regimes. For a narrow box we show that, to leading order in the width, the spectrum equals the Dirac-spectrum result multiplied by a purely geometric overlap factor Φbox(κ,Δ)\Phi_{\rm box}(\kappa,\Delta); this factor turns the infrared slope from k3ln2kk^{3}\ln^{2}k into k2ln2kk^{2}\ln^{2}k at a break kb=2ksinhΔk_b=2k_*\sinh\Delta. For a broad box we separate the lower edge, the scale-invariant interior, and the upper edge, derive the leading behaviour in each (an infrared k3ln2kk^{3}\ln^{2}k rise, a scale-invariant plateau, and a quartic cut-off at the hard endpoint k=2k+k=2k_+), and combine them into a single uniform formula cast as a product of two universal, Δ\Delta-independent edge functions. We also provide an integral-free closed-form surrogate for these edge functions for use in parameter scans.

Keywords

Cite

@article{arxiv.2607.10730,
  title  = {Scalar-induced gravitational waves from a box-shaped curvature power spectrum},
  author = {Zu-Cheng Chen and Lang Liu},
  journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:2607.10730},
  year   = {2026}
}

Comments

30 pages, 4 figures