Inflationary Tensor Perturbations After BICEP

Abstract

The measurement of B-mode polarization of the cosmic microwave background at large angular scales by the BICEP experiment suggests a stochastic gravitational wave background from early-universe inflation with a surprisingly large amplitude. The power spectrum of these tensor perturbations can be probed both with further measurements of the microwave background polarization at smaller scales, and also directly via interferometry in space. We show that sufficiently sensitive high-resolution B-mode measurements will ultimately have the ability to test the inflationary consistency relation between the amplitude and spectrum of the tensor perturbations, confirming their inflationary origin. Additionally, a precise B-mode measurement of the tensor spectrum will predict the tensor amplitude on solar system scales to 20% accuracy for an exact power law tensor spectrum, so a direct detection will then measure the running of the tensor spectral index to high precision.

5 pages, 1 figure version 3 has been accepted for publication in PRL, typos corrected, and references added

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Cited by in corpus (18)

• BICEP2 / Keck Array V: Measurements of B-mode Polarization at Degree Angular Scales and 150 GHz by the Keck Array
• Trace-anomaly driven inflation in modified gravity and the BICEP2 result
• Generalised tensor fluctuations and inflation
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