Tuning the stochastic background of gravitational waves with theory and observations

TL;DR

This paper analyzes the stochastic background of gravitational waves using WMAP data, explores its relation to f(R) gravity theories, and proposes a conformal approach to parameterize these theories based on gravitational wave observations.

Contribution

It updates previous analyses by using WMAP data instead of older COBE data and links gravitational wave backgrounds to f(R) gravity theories through a conformal framework.

Findings

WMAP data provides new constraints on the SBGWs.

A connection between SBGWs and f(R) gravity is established.

Conformal treatment offers a natural parametrization of f(R) theories.

Abstract

In this this paper the stochastic background of gravitational waves (SBGWs) is analyzed with the auxilium of the WMAP data. We emphasize that, in general, in previous works in the literature about the SBGWs, old COBE data were used. After this, we want to face the problem of how the SBGWs and f(R) gravity can be related, showing, vice versa, that a revealed SBGWs could be a powerly probe for a given theory of gravity. In this way, it will also be shown that the conformal treatment of SBGWs can be used to parametrize in a natural way f(R) theories.