TH Cosmo Coffee

Odd gravitational waves from inflation

by Lorenzo Sorbo (U. Mass.)

Europe/Zurich
4/2-011 - TH common room (CERN)

4/2-011 - TH common room

CERN

15
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Description
The existence of a primordial spectrum of gravitational waves is a generic prediction of inflation, and several CMB experiments are going after this signature. Here I will discuss how the coupling of a pseudoscalar inflaton to a gauge field can induce, in a two-step process, gravitational waves with unusual properties such as: (i) a net chirality (ii) a blue spectrum (iii) being detectable in the (relatively) near future by ground-based gravitational interferometers (iv) large nongaussianities even if the scalar perturbations are approximately gaussian.