The Maximal Amount of Gravitational Waves in the Curvaton Scenario

TL;DR

This paper calculates the maximum possible gravitational wave background generated by curvaton perturbations, which could be detectable in future experiments, offering an alternative to inflation-based predictions.

Contribution

It provides a second-order perturbation theory calculation of gravitational waves in the curvaton scenario, linking non-Gaussianity to gravitational wave amplitude.

Findings

Gravitational wave spectrum can be within reach of future detectors.

Generated gravitational waves are proportional to non-Gaussianity levels.

Curvaton scenario can produce detectable gravitational waves despite low inflation scale.

Abstract

The curvaton scenario for the generation of the cosmological curvature perturbation on large scales represents an alternative to the standard slow-roll scenario of inflation in which the observed density perturbations are due to fluctuations of the inflaton field itself. Its basic assumption is that the initial curvature perturbation due to the inflaton field is negligible. This is attained by lowering the energy scale of inflation, thereby highly suppressing the amount of gravitational waves produced during inflation. We compute the power-spectrum of the gravitational waves generated at second order in perturbation theory by the curvaton (isocurvature) perturbations between the end of inflation and the curvaton decay. An interesting property of this contribution to the tensor perturbations is that it is directly proportional to the amount of non-Gaussianity predicted within the curvaton scenario. We show that the spectrum of gravitational waves may be in the range of future gravitational wave detectors.