Testing the early universe with anisotropies of the gravitational wave background

Ema Dimastrogiovanni, Matteo Fasiello, Ameek Malhotra, P. Daniel Meerburg, Giorgio Orlando

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12 Citations (Scopus)
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Abstract

In this work we analyse in detail the possibility of using small and intermediate-scale gravitational wave anisotropies to constrain the inflationary particle content. First, we develop a phenomenological approach focusing on anisotropies generated by primordial tensor-tensor-scalar and purely gravitational non-Gaussianities. We highlight the quantities that play a key role in determining the detectability of the signal. To amplify the power of anisotropies as a probe of early universe physics, we consider cross-correlations with CMB temperature anisotropies. We assess the size of the signal from inflationary interactions against so-called induced anisotropies. In order to arrive at realistic estimates, we obtain the projected constraints on the non-linear primordial parameter F NL for several upcoming gravitational wave probes in the presence of the astrophysical gravitational wave background. We further illustrate our findings by considering a concrete inflationary realisation and use it to underscore a few subtleties in the phenomenological analysis.

Original languageEnglish
Article number040
Number of pages50
JournalJournal of Cosmology and Astroparticle Physics
Volume2022
Issue number2
DOIs
Publication statusPublished - Feb-2022

Keywords

  • inflation
  • physics of the early universe
  • primordial gravitational waves (theory)

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