Gravitational Wave - Gauge Field Oscillations

TL;DR

This paper explores how gravitational waves interact with gauge fields, revealing complex oscillation behaviors and energy exchange phenomena with potential cosmological implications.

Contribution

It introduces a novel analysis of gravitational and gauge field wave interactions in multi-flavor gauge field backgrounds, highlighting oscillation dynamics similar to neutrino flavor oscillations.

Findings

Gravitational waves convert into gauge field waves and vice versa.

Multiple gauge field flavors lead to complex oscillation patterns.

Energy exchange causes wave amplitudes to evolve on a multidimensional sphere.

Abstract

Gravitational waves propagating through a stationary gauge field transform into gauge field waves and back again. When multiple families of flavor-space locked gauge fields are present, the gravitational and gauge field waves exhibit novel dynamics. At high frequencies, the system behaves like coupled oscillators in which the gravitational wave is the central pacemaker. Due to energy conservation and exchange among the oscillators, the wave amplitudes lie on a multidimensional sphere, reminiscent of neutrino flavor oscillations. This phenomenon has implications for cosmological scenarios based on flavor-space locked gauge fields.