Parity Violation in Graviton Non-gaussianity

TL;DR

This paper investigates parity violation in graviton non-gaussianity during inflation, developing a formalism to calculate it and finding no violation in exact de Sitter space, but a small effect in slow-roll inflation.

Contribution

The authors develop a new formalism for calculating graviton non-gaussianity and demonstrate the absence of parity violation in de Sitter space, extending analysis to slow-roll inflation.

Findings

No parity violation in graviton bispectrum in de Sitter space

Parity violation is proportional to slow-roll parameter

Potential for testing parity violation via CMB observations

Abstract

We study parity violation in graviton non-gaussianity generated during inflation. We develop a useful formalism to calculate graviton non-gaussianity. Using this formalism, we explicitly calculate the parity violating part of the bispectrum for primordial gravitational waves in the exact de Sitter spacetime and prove that no parity violation appears in the non-gaussianity. We also extend the analysis to slow-roll inflation and find that the parity violation of the bispectrum is proportional to the slow-roll parameter. We argue that parity violating non-gaussianity can be tested by the CMB. Our results are also useful for calculating three-point function of the stress tensor in the non-conformal field theory through the gravity/field theory correspondence.