scholarly journals Confronting inflation models with the coming observations on primordial gravitational waves

2020 ◽  
Vol 80 (12) ◽  
Author(s):  
Taotao Qiu ◽  
Taishi Katsuragawa ◽  
Shulei Ni

AbstractThe recent observations from CMB have imposed a very stringent upper-limit on the tensor/scalar ratio r of inflation models, $$r < 0.064$$ r < 0.064 , which indicates that the primordial gravitational waves (PGW), even though possible to be detected, should have a power spectrum of a tiny amplitude. However, current experiments on PGW is ambitious to detect such a signal by improving the accuracy to an even higher level. Whatever their results are, it will give us much information about the early Universe, not only from the astrophysical side but also from the theoretical side, such as model building for the early Universe. In this paper, we are interested in analyzing what kind of inflation models can be favored by future observations, starting with a kind of general action offered by the effective field theory (EFT) approach. We show a general form of r that can be reduced to various models, and more importantly, we show how the accuracy of future observations can put constraints on model parameters by plotting the contours in their parameter spaces.

2016 ◽  
Vol 25 (12) ◽  
pp. 1644011 ◽  
Author(s):  
Susha L. Parameswaran ◽  
Ivonne Zavala

Assuming that the early universe had (i) a description using perturbative string theory and its field theory limit, (ii) an epoch of slow-roll inflation within a four-dimensional effective field theory and a hierarchy of scales [Formula: see text] that keeps the latter under control, we derive an upper bound on the amplitude of primordial gravitational waves. The bound is very sensitive to mild changes in numerical coefficients and the expansion parameters. For example, allowing couplings and mass-squared hierarchies [Formula: see text] implies [Formula: see text], but asking more safely for hierarchies [Formula: see text], the bound becomes [Formula: see text]. Moreover, large volumes — typically used in string models to keep backreaction and moduli stabilization under control — drive [Formula: see text] down. Consequently, any detection of inflationary gravitational waves would present an interesting but difficult challenge for string theory.


2021 ◽  
Vol 81 (3) ◽  
Author(s):  
Chengjie Fu ◽  
Jing Liu ◽  
Tao Zhu ◽  
Hongwei Yu ◽  
Puxun Wu

AbstractWe investigate axion inflation where the gravitational Chern–Simons term is coupled to a periodic function of the inflaton. We find that tensor perturbations with different polarizations are amplified in different ways by the Chern–Simons coupling. Depending on the model parameters, the resonance amplification results in a parity-violating peak or a board plateau in the energy spectrum of gravitational waves, and the sharp cutoff in the infrared region constitutes a characteristic distinguishable from stochastic gravitational wave backgrounds produced by matter fields in Einstein gravity.


2015 ◽  
Vol 30 (28n29) ◽  
pp. 1545005
Author(s):  
Qing-Guo Huang

Gravitational waves can escape from the big bang and can be taken as a probe to the physics, in particular the inflation, in the early universe. Planck scale is a fundamental scale for quantum theory of gravity. Requiring the excursion distance of inflaton in the field space during inflation yields an upper bound on the tensor-to-scalar ratio. For example, [Formula: see text] for [Formula: see text]. In the typical inflationary scenario, we predict [Formula: see text] and [Formula: see text] which are consistent with Planck data released in 2015 quite well. Subtracting the contribution of thermal dust measured by Planck, BICEP2 data implies [Formula: see text] which is the tightest bound on the tensor-to-scalar ratio from current experiments.


2005 ◽  
Vol 20 (05) ◽  
pp. 297-312 ◽  
Author(s):  
CLAUDIO A. SCRUCCA

We review the mechanisms of supersymmetry breaking mediation that occur in sequestered models, where the visible and the hidden sectors are separated by an extra dimension and communicate only via gravitational interactions. By locality, soft breaking terms are forbidden at the classical level and reliably computable within an effective field theory approach at the quantum level. We present a self-contained discussion of these radiative gravitational effects and the resulting pattern of soft masses, and give an overview of realistic model building based on this setup. We consider both flat and warped extra dimensions, as well as the possibility that there be localized kinetic terms for the gravitational fields.


2018 ◽  
Vol 6 (1) ◽  
pp. 145-154 ◽  
Author(s):  
Hong Li ◽  
Si-Yu Li ◽  
Yang Liu ◽  
Yong-Ping Li ◽  
Yifu Cai ◽  
...  

Abstract In this paper, we will give a general introduction to the Ali CMB Polarization Telescope (AliCPT) project, which is a Sino–US joint project led by the Institute of High Energy Physics and involves many different institutes in China. It is the first ground-based Cosmic Microwave Background (CMB) polarization experiment in China and an integral part of China's Gravitational-wave Program. The main scientific goal of the AliCPT project is to probe the primordial gravitational waves (PGWs) originating from the very early Universe. The AliCPT project includes two stages. The first stage, referred to as AliCPT-1, is to build a telescope in the Ali region of Tibet at an altitude of 5250 meters. Once completed, it will be the highest ground-based CMB observatory in the world and will open a new window for probing PGWs in the northern hemisphere. The AliCPT-1 telescope is designed to have about 7000 transition-edge sensor detectors at 95 GHz and 150 GHz. The second stage is to have a more sensitive telescope (AliCPT-2) with more than 20 000 detectors. Our simulations show that AliCPT will improve the current constraint on the tensor-to-scalar ratio r by one order of magnitude with three years' observation. Besides the PGWs, AliCPT will also enable a precise measurement of the CMB rotation angle and provide a precise test of the CPT symmetry. We show that three years' observation will improve the current limit by two orders of magnitude.


2021 ◽  
Vol 2021 (1) ◽  
Author(s):  
John Gargalionis ◽  
Raymond R. Volkas

Abstract Building UV completions of lepton-number-violating effective operators has proved to be a useful way of studying and classifying models of Majorana neutrino mass. In this paper we describe and implement an algorithm that systematises this model-building procedure. We use the algorithm to generate computational representations of all of the tree-level completions of the operators up to and including mass-dimension 11. Almost all of these correspond to models of radiative neutrino mass. Our work includes operators involving derivatives, updated estimates for the bounds on the new-physics scale associated with each operator, an analysis of various features of the models, and a look at some examples. We find that a number of operators do not admit any completions not also generating lower-dimensional operators or larger contributions to the neutrino mass, ruling them out as playing a dominant role in the neutrino-mass generation. Additionally, we show that there are at most five models containing three or fewer exotic multiplets that predict new physics that must lie below 100 TeV. Accompanying this work we also make available a searchable database containing all of our results and the code used to find the completions. We emphasise that our methods extend beyond the study of neutrino-mass models, and may be useful for generating completions of high-dimensional operators in other effective field theories. Example code: ref. [37].


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