Primordial Anisotropies in the Gravitational Wave Background from Cosmological Phase Transitions

Michael Geller, Anson Hook, Raman Sundrum, Yuhsin Tsai

Research output: Contribution to journalArticlepeer-review

74 Scopus citations

Abstract

Phase transitions in the early Universe can readily create an observable stochastic gravitational wave background. We show that such a background necessarily contains anisotropies analogous to those of the cosmic microwave background (CMB) of photons, and that these too may be within reach of proposed gravitational wave detectors. Correlations within the gravitational wave anisotropies and their cross-correlations with the CMB can provide new insights into the mechanism underlying primordial fluctuations, such as multifield inflation, as well as reveal the existence of nonstandard "hidden sectors" of particle physics in earlier eras.

Original languageEnglish
Article number201303
JournalPhysical Review Letters
Volume121
Issue number20
DOIs
StatePublished - 16 Nov 2018
Externally publishedYes

Funding

FundersFunder number
National Sleep Foundation

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