Primordial perturbations from dilaton-induced gauge fields

TL;DR

This paper explores how a spectator dilaton field during inflation can produce additional gauge fields, potentially enhancing the tensor-to-scalar ratio and generating observable gravitational waves, especially at low inflation energy scales.

Contribution

It demonstrates that a spectator dilaton can significantly enhance the tensor-to-scalar ratio in inflation, especially at low energy scales, and discusses conditions for observable gravitational waves.

Findings

Tensor-to-scalar ratio can be enhanced by a factor of order 1 for ε ≥ 10^{-3}.

Lower inflation energy scales allow for a much larger enhancement of r, potentially exceeding 10^{-2}.

The sourced tensor perturbation is strongly scale-dependent and generally red-tilted.

Abstract

We study the primordial scalar and tensor perturbations in inflation scenario involving a spectator dilaton field. In our setup, the rolling spectator dilaton causes a tachyonic instability of gauge fields, leading to a copious production of gauge fields in the superhorizon regime, which generates additional scalar and tensor perturbations through gravitational interactions. Our prime concern is the possibility to enhance the tensor-to-scalar ratio $r$ relative to the standard result, while satisfying the observational constraints. To this end, we allow the dilaton field to be stabilized before the end of inflation, but after the CMB scales exit the horizon. We show that for the inflaton slow roll parameter $\epsilon \gtrsim 10^{-3}$, the tensor-to-scalar ratio in our setup can be enhanced only by a factor of ${\cal O}(1)$ compared to the standard result. On the other hand, for smaller $\epsilon$ corresponding to a lower inflation energy scale, a much bigger enhancement can be achieved, so that our setup can give rise to an observably large $r\gtrsim 10^{-2}$ even when $\epsilon\ll 10^{-3}$. The tensor perturbation sourced by the spectator dilaton can have a strong scale dependence, and is generically red-tilted. We also discuss a specific model to realize our scenario, and identify the parameter region giving an observably large $r$ for relatively low inflation energy scales.