English

Universality of Primordial Anisotropies in Gravitational Wave Background

Cosmology and Nongalactic Astrophysics 2026-02-09 v1 General Relativity and Quantum Cosmology High Energy Physics - Theory

Abstract

We propose a model-independent formalism for describing anisotropies in the stochastic gravitational wave background (SGWB) originating from primordial perturbations. Despite their diverse physical origins -- such as Sachs-Wolfe effects, integrated Sachs-Wolfe effects, or fossil effects from primordial non-Gaussianity -- SGWB anisotropies exhibit a universal angular structure. We show that this universality arises from a single vertex function, the Cosmological Form Factor (CFF), which encodes the information on how long-wavelength modes modulate the SGWB statistics. Two fundamental principles -- statistical isotropy and locality -- uniquely determine the angular dependence of the CFF, resulting in a universal multipole scaling of the SGWB anisotropies. The CFF formalism provides a common language for classifying SGWB anisotropies and offers a powerful framework for interpreting upcoming observations.

Keywords

Cite

@article{arxiv.2602.06562,
  title  = {Universality of Primordial Anisotropies in Gravitational Wave Background},
  author = {Boyuan Jiang and Ryo Saito and Ying-li Zhang},
  journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:2602.06562},
  year   = {2026}
}

Comments

5 pages, 2 figures