Work

Primordial stochastic gravitational waves from massive higher-spin bosons

Year: 2025

Type: article

Abstract: A bstract Can a stationary stone radiate gravitational waves (GWs)? While the answer is typically “no” in flat spacetime, we get a “yes” in inflationary spacetime. In this work, we study the stationary-stone-produced GWs in inflation with a concrete model, where the role of stones is played by massive higher-spin particles. We study particles of spin-2 and higher produced by helical chemical potentials, and show that the induced GWs feature a scale-invariant and helicity-biased power spectrum in the slow-roll limit. Including slow-roll corrections leads to interesting backreactions from the higher-spin boson production, resulting in an intriguing scale-dependence of GWs at small scales. Given the existing observational and theoretical constraints, we identify viable parameter regions capable of generating visibly large GWs for future observations.

Source: Journal of High Energy Physics

DOI: 10.1007/jhep09(2025)203

Authors: Haipeng An, Zhehan Qin, Zhong-Zhi Xianyu, Borui Zhang

Institutions: Tsinghua University, University of Cambridge, Peng Huanwu Center for Fundamental Theory

Language: English

Topic: Cosmology and Gravitation Theories

Subfield: Astronomy and Astrophysics

Field: Physics and Astronomy

Domain: Physical Sciences

Open Access status: diamond

Funders: National Natural Science Foundation of China, Tsinghua University

Awards: G1859973517, G2012042336, G4652584675