Speaker
Neil Barrie
Description
We investigate the propagation of gravitational waves through the cosmic neutrino background, assuming it carries a non-zero lepton asymmetry. In this background, the graviton dispersion relation is found to exhibit birefringent behaviour leading to an enhancement/suppression of the gravitational wave amplitudes depending on the polarisation, where the magnitude of this effect is related to the size of the lepton asymmetry. The heralding of the new era of gravitational wave astronomy may allow the investigation of this behaviour and provide an indirect way to learn about the properties of the cosmic neutrino background and the neutrino sector.
Authors
Archil Kobakhidze
(The University of Sydney)
Neil Barrie
