Signatures of a Graviton Mass in the Cosmic Microwave Background

TL;DR

This paper investigates how a non-zero graviton mass affects the cosmic microwave background's polarization spectra, proposing observational constraints that could limit the graviton mass to extremely small values.

Contribution

It provides the first detailed analysis of the impact of graviton mass on CMB polarization spectra and suggests observational signatures to constrain the graviton mass.

Findings

A B-mode signal consistent with inflation constrains graviton mass to m ≲ 10^(-30) eV.

A graviton mass between (10 Mpc)^(-1) and (10 kpc)^(-1) modifies the polarization spectrum with a plateau in the B-mode spectrum.

Larger graviton masses suppress the tensor contribution to the CMB spectra.

Abstract

There exist consistent low energy effective field theories describing gravity in the Higgs phase that allow the coexistence of massive gravitons and the conventional 1/r potential of gravity. In an effort to constrain the value of the graviton mass in these theories, we study the tensor contribution to the CMB temperature anisotropy and polarization spectra in the presence of a non-vanishing graviton mass. We find that the observation of a B-mode signal consistent with the spectrum predicted by inflationary models would provide the strongest limit yet on the mass of an elementary particle -- a graviton -- at a level of m\lesssim 10^(-30) eV\approx(10 Mpc)^(-1). We also find that a graviton mass in the range between (10 Mpc)^(-1) and (10 kpc)^(-1) leads to interesting modifications of the polarization spectrum. The characteristic signature of a graviton mass in this range would be a plateau in the B-mode spectrum up to angular multipoles of l\sim 100. For even larger values of the graviton mass the tensor contribution to the CMB spectra becomes strongly suppressed.