Related papers: B-Pol: Detecting Primordial Gravitational Waves Ge…
If inflation was preceded by a radiation era then at the time of inflation there will exist a decoupled thermal distribution of gravitons. Gravitational waves generated during inflation will be amplified by the process of stimulated…
Since the first detection by the DASI experiment in 2002, measurements of the polarization of the cosmic microwave background (CMB) have grown into an important role in testing our understanding of conditions in the early universe and…
Our local Hubble volume might be contained within a bubble that nucleated in a false vacuum with only two large spatial dimensions. We study bubble collisions in this scenario and find that they generate gravity waves, which are made…
Particle phase transitions in the early universe including electroweak and grand unification ones are well-studied subjects. We point out that there are new possible particle phase transitions around inflation. Those new inflationary…
We forecast the scientific capabilities to improve our understanding of cosmic inflation of CORE, a proposed CMB space satellite submitted in response to the ESA fifth call for a medium-size mission opportunity. The CORE satellite will map…
A primordial cosmic microwave background B-mode is widely considered a "smoking gun" signature of an early period of inflationary expansion. However, competing theories of the origin of structure, including string gases and bouncing…
Detecting primordial B-mode polarization of the Cosmic Microwave Background (CMB) provides a direct probe of inflationary gravitational waves. However, the signal is extremely faint and contaminated by gravitational lensing, instrumental…
We investigate the potential for the LISA space-based interferometer to detect the stochastic gravitational wave background produced from different mechanisms during inflation. Focusing on well-motivated scenarios, we study the resulting…
We present a new and especially powerful signature of cosmic strings and other topological or non-topological defects in the polarization of the cosmic microwave background (CMB). We show that even if defects contribute 1% or less in the…
The first year of observations by the Planck satellite mission shows that the cosmic microwave background (CMB) fluctuations are consistent with gaussian statistics in the primordial perturbations, a key prediction of the simplest models of…
We present an in depth discussion of the production of gravitational waves from an inflationary phase that could have occurred in the early universe, giving derivations for the resulting spectrum and energy density. We also consider the…
A detection of B-mode polarization of the Cosmic Microwave Background (CMB) anisotropies would confirm the presence of a primordial gravitational wave background (GWB). In the inflation paradigm this would be an unprecedented probe of the…
Recent microwave polarization measurements from the BICEP2 experiment may reveal a long-sought signature of inflation. However, these new results appear inconsistent with the best-fit model from the Planck satellite. We suggest a…
In many models of inflation, the period of accelerated expansion ends with preheating, a highly non-thermal phase of evolution during which the inflaton pumps energy into a specific set of momentum modes of field(s) to which it is coupled.…
In standard inflationary cosmology, scalar and tensor perturbations grew as the Universe expanded and froze when their wavelengths exceeded the Hubble horizon, producing a tell-tale signature in the fluctuation spectrum and amplitude of the…
We discuss several opportunities involving cosmic microwave background (CMB) observations during the post-MAP era. The curl-modes of CMB polarization allow a direct detection of inflationary gravitational waves and a measurement of the…
EBEX is a balloon-borne polarimeter designed to measure the intensity and polarization of the cosmic microwave background radiation. The measurements would probe the inflationary epoch that took place shortly after the big bang and would…
We reconstruct the gravitational lensing convergence signal from Cosmic Microwave Background (CMB) polarization data taken by the POLARBEAR experiment and cross-correlate it with Cosmic Infrared Background (CIB) maps from the Herschel…
A linear polarization field on a surface is expressed in terms of scalar functions, providing an invariant separation into two components; one of these is the B mode, important as a signature of primordial gravitational waves, which would…
If the B-mode signal in the CMB polarization seen by the BICEP2 experiment is confirmed, it has dramatic implications for models of inflation. The result is also in tension with Planck limits on standard inflationary models. It is therefore…