Related papers: The Search For Primordial Tensor Modes
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 point out that detectable inflationary tensor modes can be generated by particle or string sources produced during inflation, consistently with the requirements for inflation and constraints from scalar fluctuations. We show via examples…
The recent BICEP2 measurement of B-modes in the polarization of the cosmic microwave background suggests that inflation was driven by a field at an energy scale of $2\times 10^{16}$ GeV. I explore the potential of upcoming CMB polarization…
The curl-modes of Cosmic Microwave Background (CMB) polarization probe horizon-scale primordial gravitational waves related to inflation. A significant source of confusion is expected from a lensing conversion of polarization related to…
We introduce the real space correlation function of $B$-mode polarization of the cosmic microwave background (CMB) as a probe of superhorizon tensor perturbations created by inflation. By causality, any non-inflationary mechanism for…
One of the most promising ways of detecting primordial gravitational waves generated during inflation is to observe B-modes of polarization, generated by Thomson scattering after reionization, in the cosmic microwave background (CMB). Large…
A stochastic background of primordial gravitational waves could be detected soon in the polarization of the CMB and/or with laser interferometers. There are at least three GWB coming from inflation: those produced during inflation and…
The measurement of B-mode polarization of the cosmic microwave background at large angular scales by the BICEP experiment suggests a stochastic gravitational wave background from early-universe inflation with a surprisingly large amplitude.…
Primordial gravitational waves (GWs) are said to be a smoking gun in cosmic inflation, while, even if they are detected, the specification of their origins are still required for establishing a true inflationary model. Testing…
We show that in theories with a nontrivial kinetic term the contribution of the gravitational waves to the CMB fluctuations can be substantially larger than that is naively expected in simple inflationary models. This increase of the…
We investigate the possibility that the amplitude of scalar density perturbations may be damped after inflation. This would imply that CMB anisotropies do not uniquely fix the amplitude of the perturbations generated during inflation and…
We consider a novel contribution to the polarization of the Cosmic Microwave Background induced by vector and tensor modes generated by the non-linear evolution of primordial scalar perturbations. Our calculation is based on relativistic…
Inflation creates both scalar (density) and tensor (gravity wave) metric perturbations. We find that the tensor mode contribution to the CMB anisotropy on large-angular scales can only exceed that of the scalar mode in models where the…
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…
We summarize the utility of precise cosmic microwave background (CMB) polarization measurements as probes of the physics of inflation. We focus on the prospects for using CMB measurements to differentiate various inflationary mechanisms. In…
Recent measurements of temperature fluctuations in the cosmic microwave background (CMB) indicate that the Universe is flat and that large-scale structure grew via gravitational infall from primordial adiabatic perturbations. Both of these…
Recent results from cosmic microwave background (CMB) experiments verify several of the predictions of inflation, while ruling out a number of alternative structure-formation scenarios. Given the successes of the theory, the obvious next…
If observations confirm BICEP2's claim of a tensor-scalar ratio $r\approx 0.2$ on CMB scales, then the inflationary consistency relation $n_{t}=-r/8$ predicts a small negative value for the tensor spectral index $n_t$. We show that future…
A B-mode polarization signal in the cosmic microwave background (CMB) is widely regarded as smoking gun evidence for gravitational waves produced during inflation. Here, we demonstrate that tensor perturbations sourced during…
With an energy scale that can be as high as $10^{14}\,{\rm GeV}$, inflation may provide a unique probe of high-energy physics. Both scalar and tensor fluctuations generated during this early accelerated expansion contain crucial information…