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Birefringent Gravitational Waves and the Consistency Check of Inflation

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arxiv hep-th/0410230 v1 pith:F5DO7UI2 submitted 2004-10-25 hep-th astro-phgr-qchep-ph

Birefringent Gravitational Waves and the Consistency Check of Inflation

classification hep-th astro-phgr-qchep-ph
keywords gravitationalcorrectionamplitudechern-simonsinflationleptogenesisratioscale
verification ladder T0 review T1 audit T2 compute T3 formal T4 reserved
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In this work we show that the gravitational Chern-Simons term, aside from being a key ingredient in inflationary baryogenesis, modifies super-horizon gravitational waves produced during inflation. We compute the super-Hubble gravitational power spectrum in the slow-roll approximation and show that its overall amplitude is modified while its spectral index remains unchanged (at leading order in the slow-roll parameters). Then, we calculate the correction to the tensor to scalar ratio, T/S. We find a correction of T/S which is dependent on $\cal{N}$ (more precisely quadratic in ${\cal N}$), the parameter characterizing the amplitude of the Chern-Simons terms. In a stringy embedding of the leptogenesis mechanism, $\cal{N}$ is the ratio between the Planck scale and the fundamental string scale. Thus, in principle, we provide a direct probe of leptogenesis due to stringy dynamics in the Cosmic Microwave Background (CMB). However, we demonstrate that the corresponding correction of T/S is in fact very small and not observable in the regime where our calculations are valid. To obtain a sizable effect, we argue that a non-linear calculation is necessary.

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Cited by 5 Pith papers

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    Coupling Chern-Simons gravity to a spectator field in multi-field inflation generates distinctive parity-odd scalar-tensor bispectra with perturbativity bounds on the couplings.

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