Early Universe Tomography with CMB and Gravitational Waves

Abstract

We discuss how one can reconstruct the thermal history of the Universe by combining cosmic microwave background (CMB) measurements and gravitational wave (GW) direct detection experiments. Assuming various expansion eras to take place after the inflationary reheating and before Big-Bang Nucleosynthesis (BBN), we show how measurements of the GW spectrum can be used to break the degeneracies associated with CMB data, the latter being sensitive to the total amount of cosmic expansion only. In this context, we argue that the expected constraints from future CMB and GW experiments can probe a scenario in which there exists late-time entropy production in addition to the standard reheating. We show that, for some cases, combining data from future CMB and GW direct detection experiments allows the determination of the reheating temperature, the amount of entropy produced and the temperature at which the standard radiation era started.

15 pages, 11 figures, uses RevTex. References added, matches published version

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• Decoding the phases of early and late time reheating through imprints on primordial gravitational waves
• Blue-tilted inflationary tensor spectrum and reheating in the light of NANOGrav results
• Imprint of a scalar era on the primordial spectrum of gravitational waves
• Curing inflationary degeneracies using reheating predictions and relic gravitational waves
• Gravitational waves from first order phase transitions as a probe of an early matter domination era and its inverse problem
• Compatibility of Planck and BICEP2 in the Light of Inflation
• Prospects of determination of reheating temperature after inflation by DECIGO
• Constraining chameleon field driven warm inflation with Planck 2018 data
• Impact of high-scale Seesaw and Leptogenesis on inflationary tensor perturbations as detectable gravitational waves
• Fast Bayesian inference for slow-roll inflation
• Studying Inflation with Future Space-Based Gravitational Wave Detectors
• Reheating signature in the gravitational wave spectrum from self-ordering scalar fields
• Probing flavor violation and baryogenesis via primordial gravitational waves
• Interferences in the Stochastic Gravitational Wave Background
• Axion Dark Matter Archaeology with Primordial Gravitational Waves