Astronomy and Astrophysics – Astrophysics
Scientific paper
1999-04-18
Astronomy and Astrophysics
Astrophysics
5 pages, 1 figure, Gravity Research Foundation essay
Scientific paper
The detection of a stochastic background of long-wavelength gravitational waves (tensors) in the cosmic microwave background (CMB) anisotropy would be an invaluable probe of the high energy physics of the early universe. Unfortunately a combination of factors now makes such a detection seem unlikely: the vast majority of the CMB signal appears to come from density perturbations (scalars) - detailed fits to current observations indicate a tensor-to-scalar quadrupole ratio of T/S < 0.5 for the simplest models; and on the theoretical side the best-motivated inflationary models seem to require very small T/S. Unfortunately CMB temperature anisotropies can only probe a gravity wave signal down to T/S \sim 10% and optimistic assumptions about polarization of the CMB only lower this another order of magnitude.
Scott Douglas
White Martin
Zibin James Peter
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